Michael, so good to see you right off the jump here. Look, uh, we had Bitcoin hit a hit a record high just a few weeks ago, $126,000. We've seen this pullback here over the past few weeks. I look at strategy stock down about 27% over the past month. Are investors losing faith in the Bitcoin movement?

>> No, I don't I don't think they're losing faith. Um, if you're an investor, uh, it really comes down to what your time horizon is and how much volatility can you stomach. So, if you want max performance, you're going to take max volatility. Uh, strategies up 75% a year on average for the last 5 years. So, you can actually outperform Bitcoin if you buy uh, an equity that's amplified like MSTR. If you don't want to trust anybody, you want no counterparty risk, you buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin's up 50% a year over five years. No counterparty risk. It's very straightforward. If you want to have your cake and eat it too, you could buy some convertible preferred like STRK. STRK will get the ball. Yeah, the V on MSTR is like 6070. The V on Bitcoin is 45. STRK would get your V to like high 20s. and you get a mixture of a dividend and principal protection and and some of the upside of the common equity. And if your time horizon is less than four years and you don't have much volatility uh to stomach, you shouldn't buy the equity or the equity hybrids. You should buy uh the credit something like uh STRC. you know, STRSC is is meant to be very very stable around a $100 plus or minus a few pennies and you get like a 10 and 10 and a half percent uh dividend, you know, that's tax deferred and you're you're getting the benefit of the crypto economy, but you're not on the volatility roller coaster. So, everybody's got different risk tolerance. They've all got different pools of capital. The good news this year is now you've got a variety of different instruments you can use uh to ride the digital wave.

>> Michael. Um and as those we've gotten more instruments to ride the digital wave, particularly as people have had more and more ways to directly invest in Bitcoin strategy stock has not done as well. To your point, it has over the past several years. But again, if you're talking about getting in now or if you got in earlier this year, you wrote it down even as Bitcoin was going up. Are you concerned at all that the the crypto treasury, the digital asset treasury strategy that you pioneered is losing a little bit of steam?

>> You know, over the last year, there's been a hundred companies that have added Bitcoin to their balance sheet. The derivatives market and IBIT has surged. The flows into the ETFs have surged. All the major banks have announced support. Uh the accounting has dramatically improved. The tax regime has improved. The administration support at the SEC, the CFTC, the Treasury level has improved. And so uh and the technology has improved. You know, uh companies like uh like Block have rolled out support for Bitcoin on Square and Cash App. So all the fundamentals are good. If you're going to be an equity investor, you have to think for yourself. And you have to have a time horizon of four years or longer. And equity markets are either going to lead or lag. And and occasionally they'll perfectly reflect reality, but generally it's it's only a few days a year when they'll be perfectly rational. So, if you don't have that four-year time horizon and if you don't want to make decisions based on fundamentals, if you if you simply want to park your money in a stable instrument and pick up a stable yield, you should be a credit investor. You shouldn't be an equity investor. I I think the irony is is uh the fundamentals of the industry are so much better today than they were 12 months ago that uh you've now got an extraordinary riskreward opportunity. Now is a much better time to invest. You you know all the things that you wanted to happen have happened. The market's sentiment is uh negative, but that's that's an opportunity for the equity investor that makes their own decisions.

>> Michael, you're a look, you're seen as a pioneer in this industry uh charting new territory in cryptos and and Bitcoin. What do you think about the likes of a Jim Chenos and others like him that are trying to profit off of you not doing so well?

>> You know, I don't really think about Jim Chenos. I think that there'll be some skeptics. They don't really appreciate what Bitcoin is doing. They don't understand digital capital. They don't understand digital credit. But at the end of the day, the big the big uh dynamic in the industry is digital capital has gone from nothing to$ two.5 trillion dollars over 15 years. Digital credit didn't exist 12 months ago. Uh we've issued nearly $8 billion of digital credit. Digital credit is got a tax equivalent yield of of four times higher than bank credit. You know, you can have a bank account that you know in New York City that pays you 4% and it's taxable or you could buy something like STRC that pays you 10 a.5% that's tax deferred. So the the market's evolving uh and the short sellers aren't really interested in the impact of AI or the impact on digital assets to change the way the world works. U they're just interested in being skeptical as a business. I I don't really focus on them. Nothing nothing great has ever been created by a short seller.

>> Um Michael, you've referred a couple times to this new digital asset credit that you guys have developed, STRC Stretch. Um it's a preferred security that as you mentioned pays out 10 a.5% in yield. Um and this is also a way for you all to not necessarily issue more stock in the underlying equity in order to pay for buying more Bitcoin and therefore maybe not diluting those underlying shares as much. Um but how how far do you think you can take that as sort of a funding mechanism for your Bitcoin strategy?

>> Well, I I think the money market industry is massive. There's $30 trillion worth of assets invested in treasury type instruments in the United States stretches about one 1% of 1% of that industry. We it's about a $3 billion uh issuance. Uh and and the big idea here is you take an asset appreciating 50% a year with a volatility in the mid-40s and you strip the volatility from 45 down to below five maybe to to two three or four uh or even one and then you extract about 10% dividend yield. And if you do that you end up with something which is yielding 6% more than the risk-free rate. And when you the ball gets to one, you've got a sharp ratio of six. So we're really uh engaging in financial engineering to distill pure uh currency yield above the risk-free rate. And of course, the common stock shareholders in MSTR get the difference between the 10% that we pay and the 50% that Bitcoin's been performing. Uh long-term, uh the math is pretty simple. We expect Bitcoin to appreciate about 30% a year for the next 20 years. We expect to pay about 10% dividend yield on the preferreds. 2/3 of the benefit go to the common equity shareholders. And most of the volatility is stomach by the common equity shareholders and the corporation. And the credit investors get this pure 10% uh return of capital dividend. That means it's tax deferred. they don't have to pay tax on it until they sell the underlying instrument. Uh, and that means that they're able to invest in a credit instrument that pays them a 10% dividend instead of holding a money market that pays them 4% and a taxable coupon.

>> Michael, of course, uh, we're having this conversation the day after the government shutdown officially has ended. Things have to restart up again, but still record setting shutdown. What did you think about the length of the shutdown? And do you believe it reinforces your long-term view on Bitcoin and various other cryptos? Because look, at the end of the day, record setting shutdown. I mean, how can you have trust in the dollar?

>> Well, you know, we we joke there's no tariffs on Bitcoin. Bitcoin has no employees. It's got no corporate headquarters. It is the it is an an index reflecting the digital economy or the global digital economy. So if you just like to buy um 121 millionth of the global free market, then you buy one bitcoin. uh as people lose confidence in a currency in Africa or South America or Asia, as they lose confidence in a government, if they think that their favorite company might make a mistake, uh war, famine, pestilence, fire, flood, uncertainty, acts of God, all of these things are risk factors, and they're all risk factors that Bitcoin doesn't undergo and doesn't experience. So, so as people get educated, I think they can see the appeal of buying digital capital instead of investing their money in equity capital or real estate capital or fiat capital or or corporate credit capital instruments. And so this is all a teaching moment, but I think that uh every single month that goes by, more and more people start to appreciate the benefit of owning 121 millionth of all the money in the world forever.

>> Michael, do you think uh in light of the shutdown that investors have lost faith faith in our country?

>> No, I don't think they've lost faith in our c country. I think the country is going to do just fine. This is a hiccup. It's uh it's not our finest finest moment, but right now the exciting things that are going on are digital intelligence, digital assets, digital capital, digital credit. It's pretty clear that money is going to move at the speed of light. It's pretty clear that a billion AIs are going to think a billion times faster than us human beings. You can see a world where a billion robots are going to build everything we need, where the cars are going to drive themselves, where the products are going to figure stuff out for us. So, we're moving toward an intelligent world that is is millions of times more efficient and uh and more empowering. So, in a world where a billion robots do everything I want before I think to ask for the thing, I I don't know how I won't be better off.

>> Michael, is there a risk that some of those robots or perhaps quantum computers combined with generative AI that they crack Bitcoin or that they think of something better than Bitcoin and it becomes obsolete?

>> No, I don't think there is a risk. I think that um technology will improve and hardware will improve and at some point if uh the hardware gets more powerful, we'll have to upgrade the software that protects our system. So, just like you can expect your bank to upgrade their software and you can expect to upgrade your Apple software and your Google software and your Microsoft software and you can expect to upgrade your hardware devices. I'm on the iPhone 17 Pro Max right now. You'll upgrade your computer. Bitcoin is a protocol, but it runs on hardware and software nodes all around the world. The hardware is being upgraded every few months. The software is being upgraded annually. And so the software and hardware that runs the Bitcoin protocol is going to get upgraded just like your Apple and Android and Microsoft software will get upgraded.

>> I was going to say Tim Cook sending you a check in the mail, but I guess now Microsoft and uh and and Alphabet have got to send you a check too because you mentioned all of those. Um let's let's talk a little bit about the the bigger market because of the AI advances that you're talking about. You you know you're very familiar with the dotcom bubble, right? because you founded Micro Strategy in '89, you went public in '98. Um, I was looking at the history of the stock chart here. You went public at $12 a share. The stock at that time spiked as high as 313 in 2000 and then crashed down. It remained uh below 20 until you initiated your Bitcoin buying strategy. I'm curious, you know, as you look back at that crash, what that taught you and whether you see any parallels today. Obviously, you're aware of the big bubble debate going on right now.

>> I I think it teaches you to focus. Um don't overextend. Uh you might have 10 good ideas, but you're better to focus upon your one idea and commercialize the one idea. It also just reminds you uh that no matter where you are as a corporation, you can always improve uh the company's outlook and you can improve and create shareholder value by uh harnessing the next wave. People wrote off Apple for dead. I mean, Michael Dell famously told uh Apple to shut down and give the money back to the shareholders back around 97. And then Steve Jobs returned and he harnessed the internet. And then he harnessed MP3 files and and digital music in order to revive Apple and then eventually created a crazy thing called the iPhone and it became the most valuable company in the world. I think history is replete with examples, you know, whether it's the internet or whether it's AI chips. uh people, you know, people wrote off GPUs as being irrelevant and all of a sudden we have the chat GPT moment. Uh the Bitcoin miners were struggling and then AI explodes and now everybody wants their energy. Um I I think uh that digital intelligence, digital assets, digital capital are creating the most compelling opportunities for corporations in the world today. Um I think the important thing is to use them the right way. For example, we used AI in order to design those five digital credit instruments. So, people ask, "How do you make a billion dollars with AI?" Well, we we created $8 billion with AI just by designing new types of securities. Uh yesterday, STRC traded $175 million. It's the most successful preferred stock in this in the century, maybe ever, in the history of the capital markets. uh it was designed completely with AI. It's a hundred times better than a good preferred stock. I I would encourage anybody with any corporation to to think about how how you turbocharge a company by using digital assets, digital currency, digital capital, or digital intelligence. There isn't a company that you can't improve using technology in the year 2025.

>> Michael, later on in the uh in the program, I'm going to be sitting down with Eric Trump and Asher Gnut. They're of course working American Bitcoin and and Hut 8. HUD 8 mining those operations for American Bitcoin. And I know they're very focused on power generation. As you look at your long-term outlook for Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, how concerned are you that this country can't produce the power it needs to meet the demands of cryptocurrency?

>> You know, I I think uh the company got a wakeup call back in 2020 and 2021. Uh I talked to a lot of power companies and and energy companies and they were about to decommission all their nuclear reactors. We we were staring at all the nuclear reactors getting decommissioned and there was a movement to shut down nuclear energy in this country and of course in Germany they shut them all down. uh from 19 m early 70s73 all the way till 2023 uh the nuclear industry was persona non gratada and it was politically incorrect and I think the explosion of AI and when people started using these AIs and realized they're actually quite useful and they're transformational it created uh it created a a reconsideration and and a political shift in in the United States, the Overton window shifted and and as soon as Google and Microsoft and Apple and Amazon realized they needed energy, nuclear became cool again. And we flipped from 50 years of not wanting to build uh power. Whether it's nuclear or natural gas was out of favor too. People wanted to shut down natural gas. All of that changed in the past two years. And now now the political sentiment in this country is we should uh develop natural gas. We should develop nuclear power. And of course we're only about 1 to two years into that uh sentiment shift. But I have confidence that the United States is is going to move from a lagard to a leader in the energy generation business because now we see we need the energy to drive our cars. We need the energy to power up our robots. We need the energy to think a billion times faster, a billion times quicker. And we need the energy to defend our digital assets like the Bitcoin network. And the only thing that was lacking was the political will. And I think that has flipped 180 degrees. There's not there's bipartisan consensus. There's not even a debate right now about whether we should generate more energy or build more power plants. Four years ago, you couldn't have done it. And so I think we've been saved by the explosion of digital intelligence and digital assets in this country. It'll be good for the nation. It'll be good for the world.

>> Michael, um, obviously you're a serious guy, right? We've talked a number of times. You think very deeply about all these issues, but then sometimes I look at your ex account and I see you posting or reposting these various sort of digitally generated images, AI generated images of yourself. They're a lot of fun, right? Of you, we're showing one of you in a top ad various Bitcoin bevelia superheroes, etc. Like, you know, I'm just curious how you think about that. Is that, you know, is is your Bitcoin um, you know, advocacy? Is there an element of shtick to it as well? Are you having a little fun with it? How do you think about all of that?

>> You know, when I was growing up, there were three channels on television, and they turned off the television uh the signal at like 11:00 at night or or midnight. And for 8 hours, there was no programming. There was no internet. Uh we didn't have today. We have infinite free music, infinite free television, infinite streaming video, infinite free YouTube. You can get lost, fall in a Tik Tok hole, an Instagram hole. You can get on uh stream uh and twitch. Uh there is inf we have managed to manufacture infinite everything. It used to be you had to have money to get a newspaper or a magazine and now you can see we live in a world where we have uh to say a million times more content would be probably an understatement. So the entire society is being inundated with information and their attention span has shrunk and so people just don't have an hour to listen to what you have to say. They don't they sometimes they don't have a minute. Often times I think you know should I say it in a podcast? Well maybe someone will listen to it. Can I say it in five minutes? That might be too long. Can I say it in 30 seconds? Sometimes I'll write a paragraph and you think, "No, I don't have a paragraph. People will read the first sentence." And then I write the sentence and I think people aren't going to read to the end of the sentence. And so, uh, the the thing you learn from social media is you need to get to the point. So, how about tell me what you want to say in one second. And the cliche is a picture is worth a thousand words. And so sometimes I don't give you a thousand words because you would lose 99.9% of the audience. In fact, I would say you probably lose 99.99% of the audience if it took a thousand words. Show me the picture and that will go viral. And and you're doing people a service to give them an idea that travels a million times faster that is a million times easier to digest because people just don't have time. They're busy. They're being inundated. And and when you see those images, that is us communicating something cheerful, constructive, useful, perhaps profitable to someone. But you know like like if someone says hey I wrote a book on this here's the book do you want to read it I mean how many books can you read you know literally every book written in the history of the human race is available for free to you right now do you really want someone with a good idea to give you 250 pages and tell you to read it or do you just want them to boil it down to one sentence one tagline or one picture because I'm like show me the picture okay got it now I can move on with my life thank you

>> you're making a lot of sense to me, Michael. Uh stay with us for a second. Let's bring in our social correspondent for the day, Yao Fenc's Ally Canal with some of what she's hearing from our online audience during this interview. Ally?

>> Yeah. Well, Brian, Michael Sailor just talking about infinite content on social media, which is the perfect segue since we are talking and taking your questions on social media. Plenty of viewers chiming in. And starting off with a strong one here, Michael. First question. Do you see Bitcoin catching up to and surpassing gold's market cap by 2035? What say you?

>> I do. I think we're in a Bitcoin. We're in the digital gold rush. And 2035 is the 0.99 year. That means that 99% of all the Bitcoin will have been mined in the year 2035. There's only there's if you want Bitcoin, you need to get it between now and then because the last 1% of Bitcoin comes out over a hundred years. Um, yeah, there's no doubt in my mind Bitcoin will be a larger asset class than gold by the year 2035.

>> And another social viewer wants to know why should an investor buy strategy stock instead of a Bitcoin or spot ETF?

>> Yeah. Um, if you don't want to take any counterparty risk and if you have a long time horizon, then you should probably buy the Bitcoin uh because you can take custody and take it anywhere in the world. Um, if you simply want the asset, you want it in a brokerage account, you should buy the ETF like IIIT. It's uh going to take you 10 seconds to do that. It's easy to borrow against it. Um if you're a believer and you want amplified exposure to digital uh to digital capital and also if you believe in digital credit like our mission at strategy is we want to give a billion people a bank account that pays them 10% tax deferred. If you think that's a cool idea to give someone in Japan or Europe or Switzerland or New York City a bank account that pays them 10% with no volatility. And if you think that Bitcoin can power that, then you're buying our stock because we're a digital credit factory. And if you want to outperform Bitcoin and you're ready to get on the roller coaster, you should uh you should buy the equity. But if your if your short your time horizon is less than four years, if you need the money back in 4 weeks or 4 months, then you probably want something principal protection protected. You want low volatility, you should buy a credit instrument like STRC is literally designed to get the V, you know, down right now it's seven. Uh whereas Bitcoin's V is 45 and Strategy's V is 65. And if you want something that's going to be extremely lowvol, you should buy a credit instrument like a treasury credit product like STRC, you'll uh you'll outperform your money market. You know, you might very well do as good as the S&P index, but you'll be able to buy it and sell it and get your your capital back, you know, in a in a month, in a quarter, in a year, and you don't have to, you know, worry about the roller coaster.

One of the biggest new names in the crypto space is American Bitcoin backed by Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, and HUD 8 coheroot. The business aims to make the US a crypto mining superpower. HUD 8 specifically is also looking to capitalize on the intense energy use needed to power AI data centers. I have been really looking forward to this chat and invest all day long. I'm here with both Eric Trump, co-founder and chief strategy officer of American Bitcoin and Ashley Genoot, executive chairman to talk about the business behind Bitcoin and where this is all going. Good to see both of you Jets. Eric coming right to you out of the gate here. You are the ultimate hard investment guy building worldclass properties, golf courses around the world. Explain to us why where does the passion come for Bitcoin?

>> Well, listen, it's a great hedge against hard assets. I really believe that with every aspect of my heart and soul, right? I mean, it's immediately liquid. It's it's global. It's transferable. You can transfer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, instantaneously. Hardly any fees. You can't do that with hotels. You can't do that with real estate. So, I think it's a greatest hedge against what I do every single day, which is kind of the hard asset world. You know, I think it's also a great hedge against inflation. It's a great hedge against uh corruption. It's a great hedge against, you know, poorly managed monetary systems around the world. And I think that's why you see this global influx to to Bitcoin. And I think it's become probably the greatest asset of our time. You see roughly 70% appreciation on average year-over-year over the last decade. Name an asset that's had that kind of appreciation. You just won't, you know, find it, Brian. So, you know, and and frankly, a lot of this for me personally, because we have a little bit of a political hat. My family, as you know better than anybody, comes out of getting canceled by banks over and over and over for doing absolutely nothing wrong. And I think cryptocurrency is going to be the future of finance. And uh and I think blockchain solves a lot of kind of the weaponization of the banking industry uh that's affected so many not only in this country but around the world. And so I'm deeply passionate about it. American Bitcoin is going to do it better than than anyone. I mean we started the company just under eight months ago. We're the 25th largest um Bitcoin accumulator in in the country right now public at least. And uh we're climbing that ladder very very quickly. So, um, unbelievable things to come and I'm incredibly proud of, uh, Asher and, uh, and everything that we've created on this end.

>> Strong star for American Bitcoin. Eric, what is what's next for this company over the next 12 months? What is your product road map? And then even along the same lines, how in the world do you mine Bitcoin so cheaply?

>> We mine Bitcoin so cheaply because we've got cheap energy. And by the way, isn't it nice to be able to do that in the United States of America where we actually have favorable energy policy? We haven't had that for a very long time. You see it with oil and gas and everything else coming down to record lows right now. It's a beautiful thing to see. America has to lead the way. Energy cost is everything. Energy cost is directly correlated with GDP. The lower the energy you have, the the higher your your GDP. And that's what we want for this country. So, we're doing it in West Texas using some of the lowest energy costs. Brian, we're mining Bitcoin for roughly 50 cents on the dollar to the average, you know, to the spot price of of BTC every single day, 24 hours a day. We're mining Bitcoin and we're adding it and uh and we believe this asset is going to be transformational. Listen, I I a little while ago I looked at the exact price of Bitcoin two years ago from today. You know what it was? It was 36,500 and and now it's sitting at, you know, 105 104 uh bouncing around. It was it was up past 120 um a month ago. Bitcoin has been one of the greatest assets uh of our time and and you know and even now as you see volatility which you always see in cryptocurrency because naturally a slightly higher ball you know we're still 170 180 190% higher than we were at this exact date two years ago and I think that speaks to the fact that everybody around the world wants it. Every Fortune 500 company is putting it on their balance sheet. Uh every family office is is buying more and more. People are hoarding it. And this isn't just in the United States. this is all around the world. Um, you know, it's it's an incredibly exciting asset class and, uh, I believe in Bitcoin with every heart aspect of my heart and soul.

>> Eric, uh, you know, everybody in this industry, of course, earlier on we kicked off our conference with Michael Sailor, aka the, uh, Bitcoin king. He really made a strong case that more companies need to have Bitcoin on their balance sheets. Do you have Bitcoin on the balance sheet of the Trump Organization? And if not, why not?

>> We have a ton of it on the balance sheet. We have a ton of it on the balance sheet. I'm incredibly proud of that. I've got a ton of it on my own personal balance sheet and you know and obviously I'm going all in in terms of American Bitcoin. I mean, we're setting up the the the greatest Bitcoin company in America listed on the NASDAQ ABTC. Uh using HUDates, you know, infrastructure. Asher is one of the best people in in energy anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world. Uh you know, and we're we're mining it, as I said before, for you know, roughly 50 cents on the dollar. Uh there is no one doing it that's better than us. There's no one that's doing it with more passion than us. There's no one who's doing it quicker than us. Listen, we've been listed for under three months at this point. And every single day, it seems like we're passing another company. And these are major companies that that you you know about. And so, we're climbing that ladder very very quickly. And uh and again, our our success thus far is beyond incredible.

>> Asher, let me get you into this conversation. Just before we came on, we had Mark Palmer uh really make a strong bullish case for your company and what you're doing. For those not familiar, where is your infrastructure situated? And then day-to-day, what are your operations do?

>> We run sites all across North America. We have sites in Texas. We have sites in New York. We have sites across Alberta and across all of North America. Our sites are split up in power generation. So, we own power plants and also data center capacities. Data centers that power Bitcoin and the network that everyone relies on in order to securitize Bitcoin, the asset. And then also sites that we're building data centers for that are powering AI use cases as well. We're a believer at HUT that energy is the fuel that powers all future technologies and we want to be in the center of technology and power.

>> Asher, you're building a a pretty substantial site I believe in Louisiana. Do you have a tenant for that yet?

>> Uh we have not announced a tenant for that yet, but as everyone knows, power is extremely scarce right now. It's a really large campus in Louisiana with near-term power. And so we'll share more about who's going to go there uh in in short order, but we've already started moving ground construction on the site and building a lot of the electrical infrastructure.

>> Meta's nearby Asher. Is it Meta? I have to ask.

>> We haven't shared who it is and we will we will soon.

>> Uh fair enough. Uh you know, look look through uh seen through your prism. You know, we've been talking all day long about an AI bubble. Is that talk ridiculous?

>> I think in any largecale wave and systematic shift you're going to see building and I think people are saying how much money is going into this infrastructure. Our belief is AI is going to fundamentally change the way that we operate in the world. The way that normal people transact, how they transport themselves from location to location, how they work in the workplace, at home. Um and so we think AI is just at its beginning innings of its impact on the world and on society. And in order for that impact to happen, we need to build data centers to power that compute. And so the question is, are there too many data centers being built? Are there's use cases already happening? People need to invest today for where the future is going. And so we think we're still at the beginning of that investment cycle and that integration into what AI is actually going to do for the average person.

>> Are there too many data centers being built?

>> We have not enough data centers being built. We need more power generation in the US. We need more transmission and we need more data center capacity.

>> Eric, let me get back to you here. How do you see crypto changing the future of financial services industry?

>> Well, first of all, I think it's going to onboard trillions of dollars into the US, right? That's happening every single day. You know, no, no country wants their own home currency other than obviously the US dollar. No one wants a euro. No one wants the pound. No one wants, you know, any of the Asian currencies. Guess what they want? They want the dollar. And so you have stable coins every day that are bring trillions and trillions of dollars every year that bring trillions of dollars onto American shores. You're going to see more and more of that happening. Um, you know, second of all, the speed of Binance is going to go up. There's not going to be waiting, you know, 36 hours, 48 hours over the course of a weekend to be able to send out a wire transfer. Uh, that's going to become instantaneous. Fees are going to go down. Convenience is going to go massively up. Um, you know, so much of the the blockchain technology is going to tokenize assets. Uh, we're seeing that every day. In fact, you know, some of our buildings are being tokenized for the first time. And I think you're going to have this major shift to to Bitcoin as truly the digital gold. I mean, I think you're seeing more and more money that will ultimately come out of gold. And you're going to see that that ratio disproportionately shift into Bitcoin because it's been the single greatest asset uh that that we've seen and it solves a lot of the problems that that physical gold has, including weight and transferability and and and so many other things, right? The ability to monetize, speed of monetization, um you know, and so again, you're going to see crypto literally change every aspect of our financial system. And it couldn't come quickly enough. I I think we're we're wholly behind. Uh the banks have been ant antiquated for too long. Um the banks have have frankly been the monopolies that actually have have been a disservice to ordinary people who don't have maybe the Trump last name and don't have a lot of zeros on their balance sheet who get zero advantage and and have been put at actually a massive disadvantage. Um and there's no question that every single day you see another widget popping up on your Amazon chart cart being able to to transact in either Bitcoin or stablecoin. Uh, crypto is here to stay. Crypto is the future of finance. Uh, and and American Bitcoin in terms of what we're doing, being able to mine it cheaper than, you know, virtually anyone. We are going to lead the way. We we're going to lead the way and America's going to lead the way, which makes me incredibly happy as a person who loves that flag right behind my shoulder.

>> Eric, uh, the the crypto industry is it's still volatile and look, we're right in the middle of a the latest selloff in Bitcoin. What do you think about this sell-off and what do you tell your investors and contacts when prices do come off the highs like this?

>> I laugh honestly, Brian. I like I I literally laugh because it's it's almost like not a serious question. Again, back to what I said before. Bitcoin exactly two years ago today was at 36,500. And what are we sitting at? You know, 102, 103, 105. We're dancing in that region. It's up to, you know, we we were at, you know, well over 120, you know. So, so you had a what almost a 200% return in in a two-year per period of time. And then people talk about the volatility of of Bitcoin. Hey, I'll take that volatility. Give me more volatility if I can get more return. And I think that's how crypto people are wired. And I I you know, if if you can't handle volatility, stay out of cryptocurrency and don't bother. But, you know, go into treasuries where you're going to have zero volatility and you're going to click away at, you know, 3% returns. You know, go have a great time doing that and I'll I'll see you in 10 years. Embrace volatility. Embrace the the future. It's clearly happening. It's not just happening in the United States. It's happening globally everywhere. I mean, I just spoke at a conference in Hong Kong. We had 25,000 people there watching Asher and I. It's happening all over over the Earth, right? I mean, this is here to stay. And uh I'll take 200% returns in uh in effectively a two-year period of time, you know, any time and have to deal with a little volatility. Sign me up. That sounds like uh you know the the greatest investment you could uh you could ever have.

>> Eric, when we talked I believe maybe more than a month ago uh at Trump Tower. Um what I didn't appreciate was how fast sovereign wealth funds are moving into crypto from your vantage point. What are they doing and what are the actions they will likely take next year?

>> Yeah. Well, listen, I I I think they look around the world and they see, you know, how unfair some of these countries are to to their individuals. Look how many bad currencies you have out there. Look how many corrupt governments you have out there. Look at how many antiquated banking systems you have out there. You know, it's almost developing countries almost need crypto more than the United States does, as crazy as that sounds, because it kind of cures all the problems that they have based on the fact that they don't have kind of modern financial systems. And so, sovereign wealth funds are are seeing that and they're buying into it. I mean, I've had people who run major sovereign wealth funds tell me that they're taking, you know, and most of them are governments that are taking all the energy from certain cities in the middle of winter when they don't need to use it to cool their their office buildings, commercial buildings, and using that to mine Bitcoin, right? And put putting unthinkable amounts of money into cryptocurrencies. People understand that this is the future of finance and and and they are embracingly wholeheartedly. And by the way, this is happening in the UAE. This is happening all over the the Gulf regions, all over the the Middle East. This is happening all across Israel. This is happening by certain countries in South America who are literally, you know, adding it to their national stockpiles, most specifically Bitcoin. The the passion for cryptocurrency and Bitcoin in Asia is off the charts. I mean, look at what Korea is doing right now. Look look at what Hong Kong is doing right now. Look at how Vietnam is opening up right now. And and so this is happening across the board. And as I said before, it's here to stay. And it is going to modernize every aspect of our financial system. It's going to make it cheaper, faster, substantially more transparent, and a hell of a lot fairer to the end user who's traditionally, and I hate to use this word, got screwed by the big banks, including yours truly, who was probably the most debanked person in American history for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

>> Ash, let me get back to you. I I don't know if you saw this, but earlier this week, Core Wee got dinged. uh their outlook wasn't that great in part because of a delay in building I believe an AI a data center as someone putting these things in the ground how difficult is it to get up and running an AI data center and you know how long does it take

>> the timelines to build a data center historically have been 2 to 3 years people are trying to build them in 12 months a day and you have to rethink how you build these assets instead of stick building on site maybe you skid the design and you bring it so a lot of it happens in a factory Do you have the labor to support you on site in order to run double shifts? And so in building that the speed I think at HUD 8 we're really grateful for is we used to build data centers for Bitcoin in less than 6 months. And so the infrastructure stack is more complicated but we have this mentality and this ethos in the company to build quickly to think about how to innovate around the deployment of these assets. And so the first question a lot of these companies had is can you sign a contract? The next question which we're starting to hear is can you build and can you build it on time with the customer and are you overpromising to them? Are you able to actually deliver to them the schedules that you've aligned with. The other element in these large mega projects is a relationship between the customer and the developer and making sure that everyone works in lock step to make sure that answers are given on time so you can move at the speed that you need. And so across the board, I think expectations need to be set with investors with between partners and then you can deliver projects on time and under budget.

>> Asher, uh, your company gets high remarks for I don't know how else to put it, but not taking or signing crap deals. I mean, I imagine you're getting a lot of calls to work with you in some capacity. Why is that so important at a moment like this when the AI industry is going through the roof?

>> We've had deals that we've walked away from and we could have announced and I think would have done well for our stock performance short term. But we believe in the value of power longterm. We believe in the scarcity of that power. And we've seen that come to reality from 6 months ago to today. You see demand continue to rise. Right now it's peak demand. Everyone needs these assets especially at these timelines. And we're seeing the deals get better and better. And I think we are very open and honest with customers on what type of deals we're looking for, why we think those are fair deals, and we will hold to that. And we don't need to announce a deal for the sake of the deal. We're investing in long-term assets. These are 15-year contracts, and we want to make sure whatever we sign today that we're happy about 5, 10, and 15 years from today as well.

>> Eric, let me get back to you here. How do you think the crypto industry will look different after President Trump's uh first term of uh latest term? Of course, your dad.

>> Yeah. Listen, Brian, I mean, I think you kind of parted the sea, right, when it came to crypto. You know, you had an administration in the past that was was just anti-crypto, uh, anti kind of progression of of the financial industry, and they did everything they could to possibly stop it. Uh, my father's completely reverse course on that, and America's leading the way. What's happening is as America leads the way, as it as he parts the sea, everybody else is kind of following behind, right? So, all the Asian countries, obviously, all the Middle Eastern countries are all following behind. They're using America's framework as kind of the framework, you know, that that would give crypto guide rails in in all of their respective countries. And that allows everybody to embrace it in a way that that has never happened before. It's kind of hard if America is sitting on the sidelines pooing something for so many of these other smaller countries to to embrace. Now they're fully embracing it because America is embracing it. America's leading the way. They they they want to follow us. You they've always wanted to follow us in just about everything we do. Uh they're also following us in terms of this AI revolution. They're also following in terms of, you know, so so many of the kind of energy procurement things that we're working on, you know, as as a as a country. And again, that's beautiful. So, I think you're going to see the the crypto industry massively change around the world. And I think it's going to be one of those things that that's growing so quickly right now, you can't stop it. There's no one that's going to turn the ship at this point. And uh and certainly not in a a three-year period of time, you know, when it only progresses even further. And uh this is the new standard. America's gonna be very proud of it. America's gonna lead the way in it. And um and I think Donald Trump has a a big a very big role in that because this was not

happening nine months ago under the last administration. In fact, the exact opposite was happening. Crypto companies were leaving the United States. They weren't fleeing to the United States.

Eric, of course, we're having this conversation a day after the uh the government shutdown ended. And look, we could talk about who's right and who's wrong, whatever the case. You know, I've talked to a lot of CEOs here today and they're just they're frustrated. You know, they want to keep running their businesses and planning and driving corporate profits. How do these shutdowns eventually end? Or is this just something we're going to have to deal with?

Hey, I'm frustrated. Believe me, it affects me, too. I'm frustrated. You had every single Republican voting to open up the government, and you had Democrats because they have no platform. They've got no message. They've got no leadership, and they've lost horribly badly for the last 5-year period of time doing anything they can to be absolute obstructionists. And and and it is sad. There's these these are people's lives. This is the GDP of the United States of America. I walked through Charlotte airport, you know, two days ago, Brian, and it was a nightmare. I I'm watching kids fall asleep on their their mom's lap as they're sitting on a floor because the terminal's so busy from delayed flights and everything else. It's not right. It's not right that air traffic controllers can't get paid, people who who work their butts off and, you know, and and and provide a great service to this country. None of this is is right. None of it's fun. And then I got to watch AOC out there, you know, talking about how she would have kept it, you know, closed indefinitely if it was up to her. and how dare Chuck Schumer actually have the gull to try and reopen, you know, the greatest economy anywhere in the world. Uh, you know, these are not serious people. They're they're not the Ashers of the world. They're not the Miis of the world. You know, these are not serious people. They don't have to live with the ramifications of of what they do. Uh, they're just willing to obstruct Donald Trump at every single turn. And uh, and our country deserves a lot better than that. So, I feel for those CEOs, and I'm I'm one of them. I I agree with them 100%. Let us let us do what we do best as entrepreneurs and capitalists in the United States of America and no one stands a chance.

Eric, do you see yourself running for the presidency at some point?

Uh Brian, it's a terrible profession. I can tell you that much. I've I've I've seen the I've seen the best parts of it. I've seen the worst parts of it. I can I can tell you I don't I don't wish the worst parts on on your worst enemy. Uh you know, I mean, we were the most attacked family in history. We were the most debanked family in history. Never for doing anything wrong, just because they they wanted to try and take us out. In fact, I just wrote a book about it called Under Siege. And you know, that's what they did. They put us under siege. They put our nation under siege. I became the most subpoenaed person in American history. Again, having never gotten a speeding ticket in my life because they wanted to try and get to my father and they wanted to try and take out our our family and silence our family and gag our family. Um, you know, that's a long way of saying, you know, I I I hope I probably never have to. Um it was so bad and I had I had the right voice at the time and I understood the the trials and tribulations of our nation. Um I think I certainly could >> uh but again I've seen the the worst of it. I've certainly seen the beauty of it. You can do great things. You saw that with my father in Middle East peace.

You know this is something the Democrats could have never done. This is something Joe Biden could have never done. So there's a beautiful things that come out of it. But at the same time, it's a rough world and and you better have a family that's prepared and you better have the fortitude to go in there and and go to war every single day as my father has done for the last 10 years.

Uh Ash, let me get one more word to you before we uh wrap this conversation. Uh for investors uh you know that are invested in your company or folks that want to put money to work in a hut 8 uh 2026, what is your big initiative and what does success look like? continue to build data centers powered infrastructure, continue to support American Bitcoin in their growth on Bitcoin mining, continue to support all of our AI customers. You'll see us build generation um around data center capacity both of all types of compute from AI compute to Bitcoin compute and so HUD is a company if you're long energy, American Bitcoin is a company if you're long Bitcoin.

Well, good luck on the road ahead, Eric Trump, Asher Gnu, good to see you guys again. I greatly appreciate you coming. Thank you guys.

Thank you.

Thanks, Brian.

Let's start on Bitcoin because we hit 126 all-time high in October. We're down about now 22% since then. John, explain this move to us. What's going on here? And what do you think comes next? Near intermediate term.

Well, in terms of short-term price movement, not to be trit, but more more sellers than buyers, right? That's ultimately what happens. So, I try not to we exchange um care about price discovery and efficient price discovery and value transfer, not so much causality behind short-term movements, but uh I'll remind everyone that this is an asset that is up an extraordinary amount uh over the duration of of its lifetime. Uh year one year, we're still looking at haven't done the numbers yet, but we're probably looking at 35 40% year-on-year return even with the draw down. um the ability for an asset that has as much upside as Bitcoin to periodically have these types of price corrections or mean reversions, however you want to phrase it, uh it shouldn't be surprising. So, uh throughout the my I think I've not been on your show, but all the shows I've been on during the bull run, the vice is the same. Uh dollar cost averaging into volatile assets is smart. Uh if you believe in the thesis, buying at a discount uh in a consistent, sober, thoughtful way also seems smart.

Mark, let me get your thoughts. Uh same question about these moves we're seeing. You know, I should mention so Bitcoin down 22% from that all time. Obviously, Ethereum is down 35%, Salana's been cut in half. What do you think?

Well, I think one of the things that's been overlooked is the fact that back on October 10th, we had uh what was effectively a cataclysmic event for the crypto market that uh you know, the mainstream may not have picked up on, but we had a flash crash. And uh in that crash uh we saw about a quarter of the crypto market makers go out of business.

Uh which if you think about that, you know, translate that to traditional finance. Um, you know, that's all you would hear about in the news. But as a result of that, you know, we are seeing uh some healing that's going on with regard to the liquidity in the market. And at the same time, one of the big catalysts for crypto is the potential signing into law of the Clarity Act, which would create a regulatory framework uh for crypto. Well, the US Senate was not going to be taking that up when there was a government shutdown going on. So, you had a confluence of the larger macro with a cryptospecific event. And here we are, you know, quite a bit lower than where we had been a month ago.

Dan, here's a simpler question, but honestly, it's a question I I will get from friends and family. They'll say, "What is Bitcoin? What is its point and purpose?" One school of thought, I've had guests on the show who say, "Don't overthink this. It's digital gold. It's just a hedge against fiscal irresponsibility here and abroad." Is that how you see it?

I view this more as a I mean obviously I think it's more of a risk asset than most people give it credit for.

Why do you say that then?

Because it trades down a lot >> when markets are volatile, right? So I think those movements that volatility, you see something that trades down or up so much so quickly and it's gone up so quickly over such a short period of time. That to me is the epitome of a risk asset more than people give it credit for. That being said, it's a VIX on the NASDAQ.

Mhm.

If you think about it like that and you don't overthink it, if you believe that we're headed to a great place and you know we have our sort of official price target for Bitcoin and it's going up >> then it should >> What is that official price target?

I think when you know we cover Micro Strategy so we have to have an official price target. I think we're like close to like 150 by 2027. That's kind of when we published our note on Micro Strategy. That was our sort of official stance of where it's headed towards.

John, uh, here's a question that came up today at invest. Will Bitcoin will ever be as big as the gold market? We talked to Michael Sailor. You might not be surprised that Mr. Sailor says yes. Here's what he says. He says Bitcoin will be a larger asset class than gold. Puts a year on by the year 2035. What's your take your reaction to Mr. Sailor?

So, he's a very smart guy. Mhm.

Um, and I read his analysis of why that would be the case. He's tying it to the uh virtual end of of of Bitcoin production and the fact will take 100 years to produce that the incremental 1%.

Um, he's not wrong that in terms of if you look at other assets that are priced by the marginal unit of production like say crude oil, natural gas, um it's uh not uncommon for those assets to spike up when that marginal unit production gets more scarce. So if if it's if that extra barrel of crude oil coming out of the ground is bid after then crude oil prices will go up regardless if there's a trillion gallons under the ground. So his analysis is is uh thematically reasonable. Um hard to tell what's going to happen but we view I should I view uh the coin as complimentary to as opposed to a replacement asset for for gold.

You don't both?

I don't both. I mean, in terms of in terms of the look, long-term inflationary hedges are difficult to figure out and and most large investors have not figured them out. So, you can dollar cost average the global economy over time. That would be some type of inflation hedge or you can try to pick a basket of assets that you think will perform well. Most funds that have looked at that problem when they run the analysis, Bitcoin is a part of maybe not the only asset, but a part of that asset. Incrementally helps inflation hedges over time because again it could be viewed as a hedge against money printing.

What's the risk? I'm listening to this. Sure,

John. I hold Bitcoin. What's the risk it ever goes to zero?

Um, if you think about the universe of things that would have to happen,

um, it's the what's the risk that the internet ceases to exist? What's the risk that the plumbing that interconnects us as a society goes away? So I I hate to ever I mean look crude oil went negative less than two years ago, right? The world's most important valued commodity for a brief period of time you had to pay someone to take it, right? So who would ever imagine that could happen. Obviously it's not negative now. Um so markets can do really weird crazy things. So I don't I don't look at short-term price corrections when I think about the underlying thesis for why it should exist. the computational complexity that represents Bitcoin at this point to unwind that completely as well as the hundreds of millions of people who believe in it. Is it is it possible perhaps? Is it likely no?

Mark, let's give people some investment ideas. All right, here's three uh as we head 2026. You're telling clients got three or correct me if I'm wrong. Galaxy, Hut 8, and Strategy.

Yes.

Is there is there a theme or common themes that sort of join those together, Mark?

Well, with the first two with Galaxy Digital and Hut 8, you know, these are hybrid uh firms. Galaxy Digital is actually our top pick in the space and that's because it provides two ways to win.

Uh the the company's base, what it has built since its founding, uh has been an institutional platform focused on crypto. They're basically trying to build a merchant bank, Allah Goldman Sachs, around crypto. and they've been able to uh get a significant first mover advantage as a consequence of that. Um so as we see institutional adoption of crypto uh increase uh with the Clarity Act being uh a near-term positive catalyst in that regard, you know, that business should do very well as should the uh the institutional platform at Coinbase. Um, at the same time, Galaxy Digital, by virtue of buying uh a Bitcoin mining plant in Texas back in December of 2022, when we had just seen the FTX collapse and, you know, people were thinking this was the end of crypto. They bought this facility for Bitcoin mining. As it turns out, it was convertible into an AI data center. And so now uh the company is uh sitting on uh three and a half gigawatts of capacity in Texas. It's already signed uh contracts for the first 800 megawatts with Coreweave. Uh and the value of that according to our sum of the parts is at least at this point greater than the value of the institutional platform. But you put the two together and there's an awful lot of upside. Again, a couple of different shots on gold.

Dan, uh th those remarks picks when clients are asking you top ideas head into 2026, what are you telling them?

Robin Hood is kind of the I like two names very much and there's another name that I want to mention here as well. So Robin Hood is kind of your quintessential killer app, right?

It I know the price has been up a lot, but I think you just had Vlad on TV here for a long interview before that.

It they're just a machine. They're going after a $600 billion plus TAM. Today they're less than half a percent of that TAM and they're going to 10x the company. So that means this could be like a $30 billion revenue company in a few years, not that far along. I also love a firm.

Why do you love a firm? We had Max on as well.

How could you not love a firm?

I love my wife and I love a firm as well.

Don't don't get me wrong. My wife and my kids and then a firm in that order.

But um

why is a firm a buy here? Strong buy. Because the TAM,

the total addressable market for a firm is literally unlimited. What I mean by unlimited,

it's basically all of credit. And they're offering a way for young people and not necessarily poor people, but young people that don't like credit cards, don't like to revolve credit to basically take a loan like pay as you go,

right? And I do also want to mention e Toro, which we feel like is an inflection point, right? The moat of ETOR is much stronger. The valuation is a fraction of what Robin Hood is. And you saw in this quarter, this just quarter that they reported it's starting to gain momentum. So I think that's kind of the value play in the call it like high valuation stocks.

This I saw Dan I just want to ask you. I think I only saw one cell in your coverage numbers. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think there's only one underperform. Is that circle? Yeah.

Why is and I al I know sometimes you have cells maybe sometimes you do sometimes you have strong cells. P is this a pound the table cell? This is like a sell with a vengeance

with passion with wide passion on we initiated. It's actually good. I'm very glad you asked this, but we initiated I was just looking at it today.

The stock was at $27 and everyone was drinking the Kool-Aid, the stable coin Kool-Aid, and we're like,

"This is not it's not worth that much. It's a great company, but it's not worth $27." We put an $84 price target. And if you look at it today, it's actually, you know,

touching our price target, you know, back and forth.

It's rates are coming down. their circulation is not going up much more beyond like sequentially the circulation of USDC is like in the mid70s

and they have to pay more and more for partners like you know our esteemed partners here at Coinbase and others

in order to get the stable coin so it's like a it's like a buyer market not a sellers market so you know we we still think there's you know obviously like more bad news to come on on that front and we're pressing the pressing the sell on that one

John let me ask you this um because we're talking about cattle said for crypto what are what are risk crypto investors you think have to think about broadly in 2026 do is it leverage on regulation cussy risk what should I have on my radar

so the the macro thesis quite frankly looks good I mean and I know the price action recently hasn't been has been great but um we're looking at uh massive regulatory unlocks uh under the radar was a recent IRS unlock where the IRS came out and provided real clarity on around on around tax issues around crypto which I think was a under under uh underserved point.

Um we've got a massive increase in institutional adoption, Coinbase's announcement of City Partnership, JP Morgan using so I I think um the there's going to be periods of of peaks and valleys uh ultimately. So again, the idea of of t trying to time the market I would think would be the biggest risk. Um because a sober dollar cost averaging approach given the regulatory unlocks given the increased institutional growth seems smart. But I think to answer your question fully, I think market timing and avoiding trying to market time would probably be the the biggest risk.

John, you might have line aside here. Do who has who owns Bitcoin right now? I mean is it Josh? Is it institutions? Do we have a good like know what the breakdown is?

So there are charts floating around. Um depending on whether you view Black Rockck as a single institutional owner, which I don't because their sales come through >> people buying via the ETF. Uh you'll see numbers meaning saying that majority of Bitcoin is now institutionally owned. There's been recent selling from large uh old owners of Bitcoin. So I think I think the general thesis is it's moving more institutional, but again you have to unpack the nuance of that. The ETFs have been extraordinarily popular. And so I view ETF as retail ownership even though it's coming through an institutional rapper. Uh so um I think we're looking at about you know roughly 50% ownership of institutional versus versus retail.

Mark I'll end with you. You know obviously no surprise one big theme we're talking about today all things AI. When clients ask you Mark help us understand how how AI and crypto intersect now and looking ahead. How do you explain that to them?

Yeah well um you know I just gave one example with Galaxy Digital. Another is is HUD 8 which is a uh a company which um has had as its uh basis uh Bitcoin mining >> uh and then was able to evolve into uh a hybrid company that also had AI data centers. Uh what is the common denominator there? Energy. It's the uh the energy underlying this which uh is really uh the the key underlying theme that if you can uh harness that energy, collect energy related assets uh then uh those can be allocated to to Bitcoin mining uh to AI uh training of large language models or whatever the next technology is that comes along, you know. So, I think that as it pertains to uh AI, and I'd say this for crypto as well, you really have to be open-minded and flexible at this point because we're so early.

You know, even even uh crypto, you know, uh we just had the um 17th anniversary of uh the release of the Bitcoin white paper. You know, uh Bitcoin is not even an adult yet. You know, it's still a teenager. Um you know, we act like we're in this uh you know, next stage of institutional adoption when really, you know, we're in a very nent period with regard to AI. Yes, there were folks who were talking about AI a few years ago, but not like now, not with the the kind of uh intensity that we've been seeing. You know, that's going to be going into directions uh that that we cannot foresee at this point, you know. So, it really is important to be flexible, to follow the trends uh and to be open-minded and to find those common denominators uh such as energy.

All right. As one as one guest put it to me today, he thinks, you know, AI, we're not even early innings. We're still in the batting cage. There you go, fellas. Great discussion. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Crypto exchange Kraken will be marking its 15th anniversary in 2026, making it the veritable granddaddy in this still young industry. The market has gotten a lot more crowded in that time and more established. With more on where the industry is going from here, we're joined by Arjun Si. He is Kraken co-CEO. Thanks for being here, Arjun.

Thanks for having me.

I do want to ask about price first because there is some interesting price action today. We've seen Bitcoin fall below a 100,000. How closely do you watch the prices and how much is traffic on your platform correlated to the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?

Yeah, just like any other asset, the more it goes up, um there's speculation around it. So, people get interested in it and then they try to buy the asset. When it goes down, you tend to get a little bit more negative news. But that's across every asset class, you know, crypto, ETFs, stocks, shares, etc.

So, are you concerned at all that with that volatility that you know that there is this drop in traffic? And how long do you think that this drop in crypto could last?

Yeah, so for our platform, we have over 400 plus cryptoreated assets. We have all of the um uh stocks and ETFs in the United States um as well as you know some international stocks that are going to be on the platform soon. So for us, it's across the board. One thing I think that's important is if you just look at the general slope of crypto bitcoin from you know 6,000 to 15,000 to um 25 back to 8 to 50 you know back to 16 then 80 etc. you you always have these curves that have continued to change for all asset classes and I think what's much more important is um what is the thesis behind why you'd want to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of these assets versus you know hold a dollar or any other shares

and do you think that that um sort of philosophy or reason for buying it that that is going to expand regardless of what happens to the price?

Yeah, there's going to be micro and macro cyclicalities across all jurisdictions. So the US perspective is that we'll take a look at you know traditional markets. Um but you know we're in um you know Australia, Canada, United States, UK, greater Europe um etc. and then the rest of the world. All of these markets in some cases they don't have access to their own equities markets. So they're looking to buy assets that they consider safe. Most of the time those assets are US assets. Um and crypto is one of those as well. So Bitcoin, Ethereum, the alts, um Salana, etc. become sort of more synonymous with safety over time. And then the next phase of safety has been US treasuries which are stable coins. And then tokenized equities have been like a huge boon for us and other platforms as well which is essentially similar to US Treasury as an asset that's safe. People want access to McDonald's, S&P 500, uh Nvidia, etc. Um, and I think that's great because you're leveraging the global liquidity, global access, global distribution through any global platform out there to be able to get access to these assets no matter no matter where you are in the world, no matter what platform you use.

Um, I do wanted to get more into tokenization, but first to kind of take a step back here for people who aren't as familiar perhaps with Kraken. You guys have a lot of traffic internationally as well. You know, there are a lot of crypto platforms now. As I mentioned, you guys have been around for a long time, but there are a lot of crypto platforms that are accessible here in the US and we're seeing an increasing number because existing platforms like a Robin Hood, for example, has gotten more and more into crypto. So, how should people think about Kraken? What is the identity of Kraken versus some of those other platforms?

Yeah. So, I'd take a step back in that the TAM is large, right? The totally addressable market around how to get people access to these financial products in the first place. So over time you've seen a lot of these fintech companies just give broader access underbanked um you have neo bank services etc sort of converging on giving people access to you know any type of yield or savings. So the way to sort of think about it is um you have all this um open access we talk about um open internet open banking etc. Well, worldwide that hasn't really happened that much. And so the first new movement worldwide in terms of distribution is mobile phone access to internet and now a global internet capital markets which is essentially crypto and then you're moving assets into that. Um and so we've been you know worldwide since day one. We've been fully remote since day one. So it just gives us access to a larger pool of customers. I think what has always made us different frankly is outside of you know core features is our culture. So what do we stand for? We stand for your property and your money is yours. Um it's your sovereign um property. Similar to how we think about our own freedoms and assets here in the United States. Uh we want to be able to bring your assets similar to how we think about crypto is like it's interoperable. Um you can move it the way you want to. If you want to opt into a program that gives you a certain amount of yield and you go to who you trust. And so we're vertically integrated in that way which is we're an exchange like NASDAQ and then we have an interactive bro broker style platform for you to be able to you know use our products to be able to buy any of these assets that you want. And so crypto is where we started. Cryptonative is how we were born. But those principles are what carries us for the all the other products that we give access to. So you know a lot of people talk about financial inclusion. I I think of it more as how do we get more and more participants to um get into the ecosystem. You know, crypto is a rails in the back end for us and in some cases it's freedom to do whatever you want with your money, but the ability to have freedom to do what you want with your money is to be able to have forward mobility in the first place. So, at a time when we're talking about, you know, how do I uh participate in the capital markets, we're talking about socialism in some cases, um you know, what do I actually get for my money and who are the services that that I use? I think the traditional institutions are capped to high net worth individuals and larger folks that have pulled capital for better products. We want to bring all of those products to everyone worldwide.

Um you you guys also have expanded more into the retail side. You bought a company called Ninja Trader earlier this year. Historically you had been more a home for maybe professional traders and again this is an area that some of your competitors are getting into more. Coinbase for example is leaning more institutional now. So, is that a threat for you guys? How do you think about that competition?

Yeah, I I generally don't like the terms where when people say retail or institutional, it's it's as if you're pitting people against each other.

And so, you know, what does the average consumer do when they're starting off like as an entry point? What does someone do when they're, you know, um um in their midlife of their career? And then what does a high net worth individual do? Like that's that's the aspiration for everyone, right? like whatever your asset might be from your, you know, your job where you get paid a salary plus a bonus and maybe equity depending on how you work. And so worldwide these things are changing. And so the way in which we categorize our customers is that we started off with an exchange for, you know, active traders and professional traders worldwide. They eat the same, they think the same, they read the same, they're educated the same. Purchasing power parody is very similar worldwide. They're the basis and the strength of our liquidity, our global platform, our rails. and they just give us the ability to create all these products for consumers. And so, you know, traditionally people will say retail, but I I think of retail as a like this transactional model of an individual. It's like what do you care about? What do I care about? What will my kids care about? And so, it's consumers on their journey and then we build a separate set of products for them that are powered by our liquidity engine or crack and exchange. And so, the interface is different. So, we have a app called which is for sending, receiving, and getting yield similar to how someone who was a high net worth individual would get. So, if you want a 5% yield, hopefully in the future, eight to 15% yield, instead of having millions of dollars to get access to that product, you can have $5,000 or even, you know, $1,000. And then for our institutions, what they really care about is custody, safety, security. Um, so we offer a lot of these yield products. So, the DATs that we all hear about in the public markets, we support that.

Digital asset treasuries.

That's right. Um, and um, you know, the companies that want to buy and hold um, on their balance sheet, Bitcoin or Ethereum or any alts, we support that, too. And then there's these protocol companies that are listing their tokens. We support them as well. So um this is not any different than uh banking and financial services and the institutions that we're used to.

Um, we are building institutional products but they are supported by um our customers in the first place and we consider um you know as a part of our ethos free and fair and level playing field. So, a professional trader, a consumer, or an institution when they come onto our platform, they're they're able to trade um store, save, get products all at a equal access.

Um, you mentioned tokenization a little bit, and I know you guys have a tokenized stock product outside of the US called X stocks, right?

Um, how is that product doing and do you have plans to bring it into the US? I mean, the sort of use case where it seems more logical outside of the US. So, talk me through how you guys are thinking about that.

Sure. So similar to stable coins um we uh built out our platform called XOXOX or it's tokenized equities. It's permissionless. It's um u it's across multiple chains today. So Salana and ETH are the two main ones where we launched and there it's available worldwide including most of Europe. Not available in the United States yet, but we're hoping that changes over the next coming months to years. The way to think about it is again as I'd mentioned before, people want access no matter where they are in the world to um what I call safe assets or growing assets. And um you know it's either a hedge against inflation or they want to be able to have forward mobility. So if you're a a shopkeeper um in Latin America and you want access to the S&P 500, you have access now and if you want to get you know yields for it, you can do that as well. But I think what's more important is that create there's global distribution of uh getting people on boarded into the US capital ecosystem. What's what's really great is um you have more people participating. You have more liquidity in the ecosystem. You have more owners worldwide that sort of think the same way we do here in terms of what our US capital values are. Um and and that that ends up being really great. And so it has become one of our fastest growing products. I think we just created sorry we just passed 10 billion in transactional volume um on a token list you know permissionless platform. And it's not just available on a Kraken. It's available on the Phantom wallet. It's available on a Salana Dex in any of these markets. Um, and so I think what's really great is like while we're creating our product, we don't also want to force people into a walled garden where they say you can only buy equities with us, you can only buy crypto with us. If you buy with us, you can move it to a wallet. If you want to buy from another wall and bring it to us, you can. As long as our banking and financial services support what you want, that's what we're there to do in terms of their workflow.

Um, I want to ask you about regulation particularly here in the US because Kraken's not available in every state and not all of your services are available in every state in part depending on particular coins that people

We're available in all states but one.

All states but one. What's the one state where you're not available?

Uh, we're still not available in New York today.

New York and which is where we sit right now. So, um, do you think that's going to change? And do you, as I said, even if you're available in all states, there are certain things that are not necessarily available in all states. Do I have that right?

No, we're available with 99.9% of all our products.

Do you think New York's going to change? And do you think in general you're going to see more loosening of regulation here in the US?

Yeah, I don't think it's about loosening of regulations. This is kind of the sort of the proverbial thought is that if there's any um uh change in the way in which regulations are structured that um you are uh you're not protecting the consumer, right? Consumer protection is at the you know um like trust, safety and consumer protection has to be at the forefront. Um and this is very similar in Europe. And so a lot of the conversations people are having now are how many disclosures or um you know like the cigarette disclosures that you're going to get cancer um do you have for products that are actually meant to give people forward mobility and and I think a lot of the discussions we're having is okay well what are the types of financial products that you can get out to people um and so in New York specifically I can't speak to like what they're thinking um but you know in the United States we had the Genius Act which is around legitimizing you know onetoonebacked uh treasury yields into stable coins and then the next phase is going to be what people call market structure or the clarity act that passed the house which is like what are what are um the ways in which you can get financial products now through the exchanges into the United States and so once that happens I think what's going to be great is um it'll be a flood of innovation flood of capital flood of products that can come in and actually start innovating with us not not just one or two companies

um, finally I want to ask you um, you might have seen the headline that Gayscale filed for its IPO today um, there's been a lot of crypto IPOs this year. What are you guys waiting for?

Look, I think the best way to run a company is to be prudent and disciplined um first and foremost and also who are your customers and who you who do you cater to. So, we've got three large constituents and what we want to be able to do is talk to them about um we're financially sound. We know how to have our own risk management on how we run our company. We have enough capital on our balance sheet today as a private company. um and that we don't race to the door as quickly as possible. Um you know the fear of missing out because everyone else is doing it. Um and so I think what what's good about these companies coming out first is that they are educating the market on what's good and what's bad, what margin looks like, how do you make money, etc. I think for us we're going to do it how we think about what public markets mean, you know, in terms of access to capital or trust when our clients want it.

All right. Thanks so much, Arjent. Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

I was going to go off on a different direction this interview, but I got an alert uh from Yahoo Finance. There's a story on our page right now saying you are delivering money to people's houses in partnership with Gouff. Explain it to us.

Hey S, great to be with you. So we're launching a service Robin Hood banking. Uh it's rolling out to external customers right now. Early feedback seems quite good. And the idea is can we actually give you the private banking experience? So the t the same type of experience that a high-netw worth individual would get from a private bank but with the digital experience they've come to expect from Robin Hood. And as we started thinking about the types of features and services that the high net worth individuals would get, one of them is they're not going to an inner city ATM. They're getting cash delivered to their house. And surprisingly, even though we're getting increasingly digitized, cash is still a very important part of the US economy and people need it from time to time and when they need it, we want to deliver it to them with the convenience they expect from other digital services. So, high netw worth individual gets cash delivered to their house in a truck. We figured out how to do that in partnership with Gouff um to the mass market.

Vlad, how does this

And that's just one of many features that I think make Robin Hood banking the the best solution for customers.

Vlad, how does this come? I have, full disclosure, I have not used this yet. Um, but I'm curious about it. How does this cash come? Is it Is it in a bag with a dollar sign on it? Like, how's it packaged? I've never had cash delivered to my house is what I'm trying to say.

Uh, yeah, we we we don't want to uh just deliver it to you in a shiny bag with a dollar sign. I think it's a little bit more discreet than that. But actually, one of the initial markets is New York. So, uh, I encourage you to give it a try.

Fair enough. Uh, look, one of the benefits of doing an event like this, we can actually get in depth into your story, the story of Robin Hood. Take me back to the 1997 Infiniti Q45, lad.

Well, that was a very nice car. It was a a boat of a car. Uh, yeah. Uh, that's a a deep cut. Um, so I was a graduate student at UCLA and my co-founder, Beiju, and I put all of our belongings, including some servers, into the back of my Infiniti Q45. We couldn't afford to move with movers and also plane tickets were were quite difficult. So, we drove across the country to where you're sitting now, New York City, and started our first company. Uh this was a highfrequency trading firm in the absolute middle of the global financial crisis where everyone was telling us that that was the worst time that you could possibly start not just a any company but a a financial services company. But the industry changed. There was a a lot of disruption. Institutional finance went from kind of open outcry trading on the floor to completely digital. And then this sort of like set the seeds for us launching Robin Hood many years later where we we basically combined the technology of highfrequency trading with uh the new platform shift of mobile and became the first mobile first zero commission financial company.

Do you still have the car? It's a bit of a historic thing almost like what the what the IBM garage or whatever that was.

No, unfortunately I don't have the car. Uh it stopped running uh right around 2013 and then uh I sold it for about $300. So some someone got a a great deal in Northern Virginia.

But uh one thing inherent to your story and you and I have talked about this a lot the past 18 months, but really this year it is the the product velocity over at Robin Hood. It's it seems like every day I wake up there's something new coming from you and your team. you know, help us understand how you're able to get some of these products to market so quick and how are you identifying new uh just new areas to grow in the space.

Yeah, I think that we've been fortunate to have spent a lot of time over the past few years building great infrastructure both on the technology side but also great great people, great leaders and uh we we try to move fast and you know do so safely because we we recognize we're a financial company and you know you you don't want to you want to make sure that uh customers have a reliable service but uh I think I think we're we've been able to move fast while while making sure that we do so safely. And it just requires having the right talent and the right technology infrastructure, which we continue to invest in. And it's it's not always the sexiest thing to to talk about, but there were a couple of years, you know, 2020 and 2021, where we didn't ship too many products, but but instead we really got our house in order and built the foundations for for the company you see today.

What's been the biggest gamechanging product for Robin Hood this year?

Well, uh, I'd say the last quarter we we announced that we had record net deposits. So, 20 plus billion in net deposits in the quarter uh, into the platform and we already surpassed last year's record of of net deposits with another entire quarter to go. Uh we also announced 11 business lines up from nine that generate 100 million plus in annualized revenue run rate. The two new ones are Bitstamp which is our institutional crypto exchange that crossed into the 9 figure revenue run rate and also Prediction Markets. Prediction Markets which we've talked about our fastest growing business of all time from a revenue standpoint doubling quarter after quarter. And we also announced so far in October we've traded more contracts at about two and a half billion than all of Q3 put together. So that's been ramping extremely quickly. Uh so I I think I think I'd have to point to that one as the fastest growing. That's on the active trader side. But again, you look on the wealthb buildinging side where we're not just building for active traders, but we want to be your primary financial account and your secondary financial account. You mentioned financial super app. Banking is looking really good. Credit card has ramped to north of half a million card holders incredibly quickly, which makes us one of the fastest growing um in that space. And Robin Hood strategies in retirement have been ramping as well. So, so I'm proud of how the team's been able to build for these very different customer bases, active traders on one hand, but but also becoming the platform that can help uh all of our customers, the mass market.

With the totality of their financial needs.

Vlad, here's what Bernstein just said about Robin Hood after your quarter. Uh, quote, "Quarter after quarter, Robin Hood management raises the bar and tells us why the stock deserves its valuation. How do you model a company that adds a couple hundred million dollar revenue businesses every year? How should, how could an investor model a business like yours?"

Well, I I think that we try to give our investors really leading visibility into how things are evolving. And as you could probably tell, even the way we're communicating with investors is evolving and improving. So, it it was less than a year ago that we did our first video earnings call, for instance, and we've improved upon that experience. The last earnings call was not only on video but we had live video question asking from uh retail customers. We had sell-side, buy-side, and the media in the room, and uh it was in the Chase Center in San Francisco. So, we we actually did it at an interesting location. So, uh, the communication with investors, I I think has been improving, and it's a product in and of itself. Uh, in terms of the financial profile of the company, we we keep it very simple. We want to grow revenues faster than costs. It it sounds simple, but it's actually not trivial to do, especially uh at high scale. And we make big bets. You know, we're not only content to improve the products we have incrementally and get a little bit better, even though that's very important, but we also make bets on new categories that you don't see elsewhere. And that led to innovations that are relatively unique to Robin Hood in our space. For example, 24-hour markets on the active trading side, cash delivery, which you mentioned on the banking side, the deposit match products, which uh still continue to be unique uh and and of course, prediction markets as well.

You know, I see a lot of what you're doing, Vlad, really trying to connect with the retail investor. That has become this investor has become way more sophisticated. Yet, I look out through uh corporate America, more broadly. I don't see a lot of companies doing video calls from the Chase Center for their earnings days. I mean, nobody's doing this stuff. Does that frustrate you? They're not taking the retail investor seriously?

Well, uh I'm seeing a ton of progress on this front, actually, and I'm working hard to make it easier for companies. I think you have to, you have to remember, most companies, when they think about their business, you know, dealing with retail investors is pretty secondary or ancillary. They're worried about, you know, making sure that they're launching products and and they treat investor relations, particularly retail, as kind of a a chore or something they're forced to do. Our our business is inherently different. Retail investors are at the core of not just our investor base, but also our customer base, and and so we're kind of in a better position to take the lead here. But just last week, Open Door, for example, became the first company outside of Robin Hood to use our infrastructure to live stream their earnings to their customers. And we've had lots of others reach out. So, you should expect that to be a growing trend in investor relations in the future. People are seeing what we're doing and they're seeing that it's resonating with retail and and they like uh they like to explore and uplevel as well. Even you look at our IPO access offerings, when we've pioneered IPO access to retail back in 2021, we were met with a lot of skepticism. You know, people would say, "Of course Robin Hood would do it. You're Robin Hood, but why do I have to share a chunk of my IPO with retail?" That seems like a bit of a strange thing. But now, after three years, four years, pretty much all of the major IPOs are in touch with us and and they're talking about how can they level up their retail engagement, and you've seen that reflected in larger allocations and and better selection for customers. So, I I think it's a it's a wave that's going to continue, and and we're going to continue to do what we can to make sure retail is a first-class constituency for every public company.

You came out uh earlier this year, Vlad, with some uh very strong or robust long-term oriented growth plans in terms of numbers within those numbers. But since then, you know, the crypto industry, I it has even become more mainstream. The growth in these businesses, whether it's Bitcoin, various coins have gone through the roof. 10 years out, how big is your crypto business?

Well, so right now, crypto at Robin Hood is largely driven by spot crypto trading in the US, and it's, you know, 20 to 25% of our overall revenue. I think the interesting thing is that crypto and financial services are going to fully merge over time, and and that's kind of the bet that we're making. So, traditional assets, right now, we make a very clear distinction between our equities business, our options business, our futures business, and and crypto, and also, you know, cash management, banking, and credit card are are separate. But more and more of these business lines are going to see crypto technology permeating uh their very fabrics. So, you're you're going to start to see banking-like products that are stablecoin-powered. And there's going to be some ambiguity about whether that's a crypto business or uh a trady business, but as the two fully merge, I think it's going to be a little bit more difficult to cleanly separate. I I think it's going to become bigger and relatively indistinguishable from uh traditional finance, particularly as tokenization technologies continue to develop and become more mainstream.

Over the long term, Vlad, what business becomes bigger as a part of Robin Hood? Is it crypto or is it prediction? Prediction markets?

I think those businesses too are not going to be distinguishable. I mean, you look at uh prediction markets XUS, um, it's generally on crypto rails, and in the US, where you have CFTC and NFA, uh, they're they're being offered via traditional means. I think what's going to happen is outside of the US, the dominant way to invest or get exposure to US assets, and later on, global assets, is going to be through tokenization and crypto technology, like you see with our EU offering. And then the US eventually will upgrade uh on on the back end, but I think that it'll it'll likely be a little bit behind just because we already have that existing infrastructure that's serving customers well. And I think that if you look out 10 years, we'd like to build a company where more than half of our revenue is ex-US and sliced another way, more than half of our revenue is institutional rather than retail. So, I I think there's a ton of growth left in crypto, and also as it as it continues on an infrastructure layer with things like decentralized exchanges, perpetual futures, tokenization, as it continues to develop and mature, you're going to start seeing crypto eat the traditional financial system and continue to to become integrated at a at a base layer.

Let's bring in Yahoo Fin's Ali Canal from the Invest Social Center with some viewer questions for Vlad. Ally, take it away.

Thanks, Brian. And yes, Vlad, we have plenty of questions from our Yahoo Finance social media viewers. Kicking things off from user HedgeVision, who asks, "Do you have any other perks in store for the Robin Hood credit card?"

Oh, we have tons of perks in store. So again, we want it to be the best experience and and in line with what you'd expect from uh a private banking relationship. So, if if you uh are one of the 500-plus thousand cardholders for the Robin Hood credit card, you're seeing uh great rewards, uh industry-leading cashback across all categories. Um, and as banking rolls out, uh, you'll see great travel benefits, uh, an amazing travel portal, and uh, I I encourage you to uh to to check it out because more and more is coming on a monthly basis.

All right, so watch out for more there. And we have a two-parter here from AB. First question, as the entire world continues to shift towards AI, automated workforces, and robotics, do you see that as a threat to more traditional brokerage firms such as Schwab and Fidelity? And how is Robin Hood positioned to be a winner in that space?

Yeah, that's a deep question. Um, I think there's there's two views, two schools of thought about the impact of AI on society. One is that it's going to create lots of new jobs. So, certainly there will be job disruption, but you'll see new jobs and job families and a flurry of entrepreneurial activity. That's the one that I happen to believe in. The other one is that the other view is that it's going to lead to greater and greater centralization, and maybe the handful of frontier labs that are building these models are going to aggregate more and more of the value, and they're going to try to uh build products and engage in enterprise uh deals that basically displace workers. So, that that's sort of like the bleaker view. I think regardless of which one of these you believe in, uh, becoming an investor and getting exposure to the markets and AI companies in particular is is going to be very, very important. And that's why we're pushing so hard on retail access to private markets in the US through through various means. We think that it's going to be important for people to be owners in this AI technology in order for them to support it and defend it, because AI right now is deeply unpopular. People are afraid of of AI job disruption and how it's affecting their families and their livelihoods. Um, I think a big part of that is they don't have skin in the game. You know, it's they're they're worried AI is going to take their jobs and give them nothing in return. And we're we're very focused on solving that problem uh in doing our contribution to to solve it, which is giving private uh markets access to retail investors, particularly in AI companies.

Yeah. And we have been talking about AI all day. And then finally, for part two, with the great generational wealth transfer underway, how is Robin Hood prepared to capture and manage these assets as a fully online platform?

Yeah, and that's a great question. So, one of the uh benefits, one of the things that we're testing out and really leaning in with with Robin Hood banking and the credit card in particular is a first-class family experience. So, we want to make it easy to bank uh not just yourself, but your partner, your children, members of household staff that you might have. And that's really a first-class experience in our product. Unlike other products, you should expect that coming to our brokerage and our wealth management products as well, to the point where it's going to get better for you when you have your whole family on board. So, a lot of people think, well, Robin Hood is just banking on young people to inherit all the wealth. That's not true. I think Robin Hood is an amazing place for folks in their 70s and 80s, even, to to to keep their money and their investments. And we offer these amazing match promos. So, imagine, you know, you're you're someone in your 60s, maybe you're 5 years away from retirement. You might have $10 million in your retirement account. Well, when we run a 3% match promo, that's $300,000 that's instantly credited to your account. Um, which which is a very, very strong value proposition. Uh, particularly the older and wealthier a customer is. And and we find that as long as you're digitally savvy and you're comfortable with using smartphone and web-based technology, um, our our customers get served very, very well regardless of age.

Vlad, before we let you go, uh, I was just talking to Max Lechin over at a firm and I asked him what does he do to de-stress? I mean, he's a high-pressure cooker gig. Told me he's a competitive cyclist. What do you do when you're not doing Robin Hood? Like, what's your release point?

I like to go into the sauna. The sauna is sort of my uh de-stress zone. And it's quick, you know, 15 minutes, a couple of times a week. It's uh it's very nice. And and the great thing about it, you can't take your phone in there. Uh, if you put your, if you take your, I've tried, it's about 5 minutes before uh before it melts down.

Vlad, please be careful. I want to continue to talk to you uh into 2026. Please be careful, dude. Good to see all the stuff you're working on over there at Robin Hood. I appreciate you coming to Invest. Thank you so much.

Thanks, S. Good to see you.

Thank you. My next guest is a tech entrepreneur and investor with an eye toward making the world better. For years, he's been at the forefront of tech revolutions and among the first to recognize value. He's been an investor in dozens of startups, including 40 unicorns. Those are companies worth at least $1 billion. Companies that come to mind include Opendoor, Instacart, HubSpot, Patreon, Filecoin, and Coinbase. Not to mention he was the co-founder of Reddit, and more recently has been investing aggressively in women's sports. Today, he is with me at Invest to discuss the biggest tech revolution of them all. That is AI. 776 founder and Reddit co-founder Alexis O'Haney joins me now. Alexis, so great to see you again. We uh we've been talking about AI for this whole event today, almost eight hours of this thing. At the same time, we've seen AI stocks hammered for really uh the second straight day. Where at, where are we at in the AI cycle?

Oh boy. Look, I think everyone is realizing this technology is here to stay. It is real. Now, I spend my days at the earliest possible stages of investing. I don't spend a lot of time dabbling in the public markets, so I I can't speak to those valuations, but the bigger trend is very real. The innovation, the efficiencies that we're seeing, uh, you know, a simple example like writing code, something that I had to, you know, teach myself when I was in high school. Um, you know, the act of writing code has gotten so enhanced thanks to this technology that it's it's changing the way apps are getting created. Uh, and so if you just look at that one very, very, very specific use case, that obviously has a lot of value in the world. We can't live without software. Um, we can see the implications for this. And so, you know, I can't speak to those public market valuations. I'm still long-term very bullish on the overall technology trends, and I think one area where we've seen growth in the private portfolio has been around uh infrastructure-related investments. And so companies that are building on the the hardware side, on the the in the world of atoms, uh, but atoms that are in support of the bigger needs we're going to have around energy and compute. And uh, just excited to see that. I I think a lot of this technology can help us live much better lives, and uh, that's the kind of thing we want to get behind.

Alexis, you uh, you've been early on so many things in technology. Take us through where you're seeing uh opportunity right now, like at the ground floor thing. I imagine things you're looking at right now may come to fruition 5, 10 years down the line.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I can speak to Vibe Code. We we seated a company literally called Vibe Code, uh, that has really focused on mobile-first, you know, iOS and Android first, app development, uh, literally from a text prompt. Like my dad could within a few minutes build an app to solve some problem he has. You know, they they really believe the founders do that software development will get incredibly commoditized, and and that access to creating useful software, especially on your mobile device, uh, will just look and feel fundamentally different than how I was taught as a kid or how generations of developers were taught. And and that that feels very inevitable, and actually feels like a shift we'll see in the next 5, 10 years. On the really extreme end, um, my partner Caitlyn just backed a company called StarCloud, uh, which is aspiring to build data centers in space. They actually recently just put the first one up there on a recent SpaceX launch, just last...

Data centers in space. How does, how does that even happen?

And and again, so to have you know, have basically unfettered access to light, so solar power that's coming through. You still have to solve a lot of problems with heat dissipation, uh, which again, I'm not not the uh, the the physics expert here, but the the founders are. And what's exciting is, you know, if you want to build, and I think Elon recently, and maybe even Jeff Bezos, were recently talking about the inevitability of data centers in space as a means to achieve these extra levels of a civilization where we get to become a space-faring civilization, and we actually have these needs for compute, uh, so that we can, you know, uh, whether it's in the habit of Mars, the moon, or any of the other things that are going on around there. In the short term, right, we're having enough growth here building data centers on Earth, terrestrial ones. Uh, but, you know, at the far ends of ambition, you have founders looking to build these data centers in space to help, you know, create opportunities for using that compute out there in the constellation of satellites. And, you know, there's plenty of defense reasons, uh, and plenty of just human advancement reasons why this actually could be helpful if if the science works. Uh, so, so again, we want to be the first check in a range of companies from software, which I feel, you know, quite quite familiar with, uh, all the way to, like I said, data centers in space. Uh, this is the kind of ambition we look for at 776. And it's exciting, 'cause, you know, founders are in a way that wasn't the case when I started Reddit 20 years ago. Founders today are very aware of the power of technology. And so many of the very best feel an imperative to build not just great businesses, but great businesses that are going to help push humanity forward. And it's inspiring. It's a, it's a, you know, I'm on the other side of the table now. I'm just wiring the money. I'm not not building the businesses like I used to. And so it it feels really satisfying uh to be close to and inspired by founders who are doing just such great work.

Alexis, I think you and I are the same age. When did we become like the old guys in the room?

I know, dude. Geriatric millennial is when it really hit home. I mean, look, I'm 42. I have two young kids that that keep me keep me on my toes. Uh, but it's it's probably the best part of this job is you're constantly seeing a new generation of founders who have new ideas, right? The the 21-year-old founder of Vibe Code, right? He's teaching me about the world and his generation today, knowing he basically grew up on the site I created, Reddit, and has a totally different worldview because technology has been a core part of his entire life. The internet, social media has been a core part of how he learned, how he connected, and and it's wild just to see now the ripple effect, and and like I said, I leave most of the conversations I have with founders, pitch meetings uh daily, feeling motivated and inspired, and uh, it's it's an amazing time to be alive, and I definitely feel old. You and me both. I I assure you.

How, how are the founders of today, the ones leaning as AI revolution, how are they different from your generation?

Um, I think what's very interesting, and I know a lot has said, every generation seems like they hate on the next generation coming up as being too entitled, too lazy, all these things. And I I've I remember when it was assailed against millennials when we were the 20-year-olds. I I I I see it happening. I'm not falling into that trap. I do think the ones who are the the the builders of this generation who are really high agency, who are really motivated, are head and shoulders above certainly me and and our generation we're building. I think the the fluency, the fact that they are truly digital natives, the fluency they have with technology, but also the fact that they've seen a tremendous amount of change, right? The iPhone showed up in what, 2009, 2010? Um, those are all technologies that they basically, they take for granted. That's just the default standard state. And if you know, you and I, you know, remember dial-up modems, it's crazy.

I plug into my Compaq computer.

Everyone's hand. We take it for granted. But but what really bakes your noodle is the fact that this generation of founders is thinking about AI in a similar way. If you're 18 years old, you know, the ChatGPT moment ago, um, and so you were really coming of age and you're about to go to college, and and now you have a totally different worldview on knowledge because you know we've democratized access to to you know, infinite human knowledge. And the tools on which we're building are only, they're the worst they're ever going to be. They're only going to get better. And so the the the gift of that is the founders who are leaned in right now, they know it has never been a better time to be building a company, to be starting a company. It's never been a better time to be an 18-year-old, whatever, 20-year-old, someone who has minimal experience, but has really high agency, really high drive, and is very curious. So, it is an amazing time to be a founder, far better than it was 20 years ago. I think at any point in the last two decades that I've been either building companies or investing in them. And and I know it feels like there is a big gap. At the same time, we have members of that same generation that are like opting out of work or railing against a lot of that. And I really, really hope that the builders win. I really, really hope that more and more people, especially young people, feel compelled to see problems and then do something about them, right? Not just talk about them, not just complain about them, but actually take action. And what I've just seen, you know, the power of entrepreneurship to be able to just improve quality of life, yes, build great businesses that hire lots of people, but but improve the quality of life for civilization. I I want to see more of that. And I I I do feel that gap with this generation. Uh, but for the folks who are leaned in, it's inspiring as hell.

Alexis, you're a, you're a father of of young young children. What is this AI revolution? What will it mean to how they learn? But in addition, what does it mean for this, that generation's ability to find jobs 15, 20 years from now?

Well, okay. So, on the latter point, I don't know. I want to believe I'm a tech optimist, and I do think more new jobs will be created than uh, you know, removed from the system. I think an easy example, you know, we were fortunate to be early investors in a guy, Mr. Beast, 5 years ago. The idea of being a content creator, let alone a billionaire because of it, was unthinkable what, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, and now it's probably one of the most common professions that a young kid, at least in America, wants to be when they grow up. So, there is precedent, right, for, you know, social media that that that that revolution was a significant one, not nowhere near as big as AI, but it was one that created entirely new career paths, sectors, industries uh that didn't exist before. And with every technological revolution, there's always new careers, new things that come up that you or I can't necessarily think of. The builders are going to build and do. And so I'm hopeful there are going to be more new ones created. Uh, we actually just in DC with one of our companies, Area Two Farms, where they're they're franchising vertical farming. And when they talk about what is needed to manage a vertical farm, especially in a dense urban area, um, where you don't have a lot of space because it's more, you know, vertical, uh, is you're going to have a whole new trades of people who are working on the robotics that help manage those farms and make sure the lettuce, you know, grows on time and whatnot. So again, we're already seeing AI, robotics, you know, they're two sides of the same coin, creating new jobs, new opportunity, new innovation, better quality of life, right? Everyone deserves access to high-quality, well-grown produce, right? Whether you live in a rural community or live in a city. And so, so I feel I feel like it'll be a net positive. That doesn't mean it won't be a bumpy road. And, you know, how do I prepare my 8-year-old and a 2-year-old for this? Um, you know, we've I've already been paying attention, kind of been tweeting about things like Alpha School, which I think are taking a really smart, first-principles approach to education. I do think the future of education for let's say K through 12 looks a lot more like having guides instead of teachers, where and that's a verbiage from from folks like Alpha School and Prenda, where, you know, your your personalized AI tutor is doing a lot of the instruction, right? If you, I'm a big Duolingo user, you're familiar with that. That is probably the...

Great platform.

...expression of that, right? And and there's no reason why a kid, regardless of their background, regardless of their home life, shouldn't be able to get personalized education. So, if they need extra help with a certain part of of math or a certain part of English, fill in the blank, fill in the blank, you're going to have AI solve those problems for them, giving them that infinite access and infinite patience to support and customized learning. And then hopefully, those kids get to spend the rest of their school day actually interacting and building up their emotional intelligence and and solving problems. And I think the school of the future should really optimize the time with the AI to help learn, um, but also maximize the time off a screen so that kids are getting the things that are going to continue to be valuable when they grow up: emotional intelligence, communicating, empathy, creativity. And those are things that, in my opinion, are what really make us human. Like those are the most delightful parts of of being a human being. And and essentially, we have these amazing calculators now that have democratized access to a lot of the pure horsepower of intelligence, which should allow this next generation to focus on on the more, I'd say, human sides of it. Um, but it's a thing we we think about a lot. There's no one solution. I serve on the board of Tiger Woods's Foundation, TGR. They're doing a ton of great work with their learning labs, and that's an after-school curriculum. But we're talking all the time about how we can bring AI into those learning labs so that these kids, even when they come out of school, maybe their school systems aren't quite adopting this new tech fast enough, they can come to these learning labs, spend an hour, and get a huge ROI of customized, personalized learning. So, I'm excited. I I I really, I can see firsthand the way these technologies are improving the quality of life for the people I care about. Even, you know, if I'm on a road trip, um, or in the car for a minute with our oldest daughter, um, right, I can use AI to come up with, you know, 50 trivia questions that are suitable for an 8-year-old. Sometimes I put like 10-year-old 'cause I want to push her a little bit, and and now I have a a quick little trivia game that I can, you know, engage with my child on, right? I want her to understand that this is a tool that will help her stay curious, that will that will help her solve problems, right? I want that that growth mindset baked in. And and I I again, I I just I can't help but be a tech optimist in this regard because I can see just how much power she's going to have at her fingertips that we could have only dreamed of when I was her age.

Alexis, let me channel the uh sports out of your brain. And earlier on today, I had a had a really good chat with Ted Leonsis. Owns the Wizards, several other teams. His portfolio is valued at, I believe, close to $8 billion. We mentioned the Lakers valued at close to $10 billion. You have been an early supporter investor of women's sports. When in the world is this valuation gap closed between women's sports and some of these mind-blowing valuations on the men's side of the equation?

Look, it's coming quick. My my tweet about how undervalued women's professional sports was in March of '19 went viral for all the wrong reasons, right? Everyone, I I said this is a massive opportunity. I said I was going to either start or buy. It was an NWSL team, professional women's soccer team, and one day it was going to be worth billions. And uh and most people said I was an idiot. And no one watches women's sports, and that'll never work. And I said, "Save those tweets." And he ultimately paid, you know, a little over a million dollars for the expansion fee to start Angel City FC. And in the wake of that success, right now, it's it's valued at the the most for any American women's soccer team. You know, uh Arthur Blank in Atlanta just paid, I think $150, $160 million for his expansion fee. So, that's that's quite an appreciation over just 5 years. And so it has been really validating to see, you know, to call the shot, to spark that, and see the growth. Uh, but I think anyone will tell you, uh, it's just the start. There is so much more room to grow. And and remember, most of these men's teams' value is based on media deals that have been baked over decades. And, you know, whereas for women's sports, when we're building a team, uh, I just bought uh the LA franchise of League One Volleyball, and it was just like two weeks ago, so hot off the press. And...

Congrats. I wow. I didn't even...

We build out. Thank you. We when we build out the structure for how to build that team, most of our revenue is not going to come from a media deal. Most of our revenue is going to come from brand deals. And so we've been able to build, you know, Angel City is doing tens of millions of dollars in revenue a year. Um, you're seeing a precedent here for more and more women's pro teams to basically build the muscle of revenue generation in a way that's much more about, you know, business, right? It's about how do you drive revenue through brand partnerships and all these things that it turns out lots of companies are excited by. And the media deal is still down the road, so you have to earn that media deal through the viewerships, but the brand dollars obviously help you build the brand and prove the value, and it's this virtuous cycle. And you've seen that in the rapid ascent of WNBA team valuations and revenues. And I think, you know, it won't be for every sport, but you can see the places I've been investing, obviously also starting a formula for track and field, like Athlos, you know, that's an entire league where I've seen this same opportunity that I saw with women's soccer, where the World Cup showed up every four years, and then everyone was watching, and then they all disappeared. Uh, the thesis was simple, you know, why not make sure they don't disappear and keep investing? Uh, similarly, track and field is the number one Olympic sport. These athletes are superstars, and then they disappear. They shouldn't disappear. So, we built Athlos, and, you know, four and a half million people tune in for our New York meet just a month ago, and we're rolling out a multi-meet league next year with with teams. Um, so I'm I'm excited about all this. I think at the end of the day, we're only 5 years away, like five, five, six years from my tweet, and and and I think there is still so much more room to grow in women's sports. I think we will absolutely see billion-dollar women's sports teams, as I had laid out, and I will be sure to rub that in the face of all those haters on Twitter 6 years ago.

Last one, and I I wanted to save this one, Alexis, 'cause I think this is also in your wheelhouse, and it's also in the wheelhouse of my dear friends at Yahoo Sports. Why are collectibles having a moment, and what is next in this industry?

It is, it has been an amazing ride. Uh, we love our partnership with Mantle and Yahoo. We've got some hobby awards right now, actually. Um, I think this industry is starting to professionalize, right? The hobby was always a very mom-and-pop type business, and during COVID, everyone was locked down. Everyone was feeling pretty anxious, and nostalgia became really, really desirable. And so that's when I got back into the hobby. I collected cards as a kid, you know, like a lot of kids in the '90s. I thought that collection was going to help me retire one day. It did not.

Same here. I just found my Batman cards the other night, Alexis, from the 1990s movie. I got a whole collection of them.

'90s. Yeah, that's tough. That's that's probably not worth much. I'm sorry.

Thanks a lot.

You know, the the good news is uh the card producers are being a lot more savvy with how they're, you know, the big problem is the over oversupply, right? Supply and demand. I'll tell you what happens there. So, the card producers are being a lot smarter now, a lot more creative, limiting supply. And here's the way I look at it. Very simply, collectibles are our generation's art. And at the end of the day, if I can show you a, you know, Serena Williams rookie card on my desk, or, you know, '86 Jordan, right? That that feels like a flex that for me, you know, having a Warhol or having, you know, pick your favorite modern or contemporary artist, it doesn't really do a lot for me. Um, but if you abstract it away, right, what is, you know, art on a wall is ink or something on a dead tree, and you know, that '86 Fleer Jordan is just ink on a dead tree, but there's a cultural significance for a generation of us who grew up during the rise of sports, really the commercialization of sports. Uh, and and I think I I I think whether it is trading cards, comics, collectible video games, collectible music, uh, even match-worn uh jerseys and outfits, I think these kinds of cultural assets are still undervalued. Obviously, do your diligence. Don't, you know, ask your wife before spending your entire IRA on these things. But but very, very important is, and the thing that I really do believe is that, you know, art and and these cultural assets have always been a part of, you know, sort of the financial world. And you may not, you know, agree with it, right? A a crate of wine, a priceless Van Gogh, or uh whatnot. And I think this is just a new generation's version of that same thing. And thanks to the hyperconnectivity of the internet, so sports has never been more valuable. And I'd say in particular, if you think of this AI age, I've only gotten more bullish about the value of sports since that tweet in 2019. Not just because it's been working and working well, but because across entertainment, AI is going and already going to upend every other pillar, right? Hollywood, television, all those industries, you're seeing, right, the cost of production is going to drastically fall. There's a chart-topping song right now that I think is entirely AI-generated. It's a bop, right? But but the music industry is going to look very, very different. Taylor Swift, I'm still taking my daughter to see Taylor Swift, that's a religious experience. Kendrick Lamar is going to be just fine. But if you think of more vapid, sort of shallow, like one-hit-wonder type artists, right, it's going to be very challenging when you know a talented producer or a 16-year-old can spin up a really catchy beat, one of those earworms. And so every other form of entertainment is going to be really reimagined because of this technology. But I'm never taking my kids to go see robots play soccer. Uh, I'm never taking them to go see see robots hit 18 hole-in-ones. Right. Can you imagine the Ryder Cup with robots, and it's just 18 European...

I could, but that's not... We won't take it. We won't go there for this conversation.

But it's boring.

Yes.

And and so I believe if we project this out, every screen in our life, right? Think of how good the TikTok algorithm is, or you pick your favorite social network. They're all optimizing for that little bit of dopamine to keep us a little bit more attracted. And at the end of the day, this will only get better, and all the content we consume on a screen will be optimized for exactly what we want, when we want it, the way we want it. Right? And so there is a dystopian side of this, which is a part of our humanity dies from that because we're not here to be spoon-fed exactly what we want when we want it. Right? Our species is here because we've done hard things, or our fore forefathers did hard things and overcame them. And there's a part of our humanity that dies if we're just getting this sort of spoon-fed, you know, uh, release. And so I think the last place left where we'll be able to live vicariously through this this human experience of like, you know, going back to when we tried to catch the gazelle, and like some days you catch it, and some days you don't, and it really sucks when you don't, but you dust yourself off and figure out how to catch it again. It's left in sports. And and if you grow up, like I did, as a Commanders fan, um, you felt a lot of pain growing up and disappointment, but boy does it feel good when that that support is rewarded with some success. And I think sport is the last storyline that is going to be left with that is truly like a a must-watch experience for us in this age of AI. And I I and I and like I said, robots are not going to replace it. AI will just enhance the experience. And and so then think of all the things related to that that will continue to maintain or even increase in value, which takes me back to collectibles. It makes me think like again, if you're thinking about it as an investment, and again, do your own diligence, but if you think about it as an investment that creates a really interesting opportunity for the asset class, and we've seen it with with the marketplace Alt, that I had uh seated, the growth has just just continued uh uh quite well over these last few.

Alexis, thank you for doing this. Uh, you've always been a supporter of Yahoo Finance. Thank you for making time with us uh for this big event. We will talk to you soon. Thank you so much, my friend.

Absolute pleasure. All the best. Love you some Yahoo Finance, and make sure to vote for the hobby uh awards uh between Mantle and Yahoo Sports.

Thanks, Alexis. Appreciate you, man.

Get Our Mobile App

Bitcoin: Michael Saylor, Eric Trump, and more lay out the bullish case for bitcoin and crypto

Transcription