The TRUTH About Crypto Market Risks ft. Jeff Dorman #1032
[Music] our crypto markets at risk welcome to real Vision Daily Briefing it’s Wednesday May 8th 2024 I’m Ash Bennington joined today by Jeff Dorman Chief investment officer and co-founder at ARA Jeff welcome back to the show thanks for having me back well it’s a pleasure to have you here Jeff I have to say just right at the outset I’ve really enjoyed your recently that’s our two Satoshi talking about what’s happening in crypto markets you manage to do something that is very difficult to do which is to take all the data points all the news flow which is coming fast and thick right now and arrange it into a narrative uh that makes some coherent sense really appreciate your work talk a little bit Jeff about where you see us right now in crypto markets sure well first of all I appreciate that um look I’m as constructive as ever on the crypto markets I don’t think anything has has changed there um you know probably the biggest change um versus expectations at least in crypto was just um slower than expected inflows into uh into the industry outside of Bitcoin um you know typically when you see the type of return set that we saw in 2023 and thus far in early 2024 you see a lot more money coming in I think maybe underestimated uh either how badly burned some investors were by 2022 Andor just how difficult it is to push allocations through an investment committee or through a board um but you know within the walls of the digital asset industry there there’s really nothing not to be excited about right now sorry for the double negative there but but really it’s it’s exciting right I mean we we’re seeing a similar setup to what we saw three or four years ago which is real projects emerging real uh and new sectors emerging right similar to 2020 21 when all of a sudden we had Defi and stable coins and nfts you know now you’ve got a real World assets and you’ve got uh Bitcoin layer twos and and and you know ordinals and runes popping up you’ve got uh Ai and gaming so it’s a really nice setup not to mention the macro setup so pretty exciting um I think uh the Big Challenge as always is just the narrative right can we um separate what’s actually happening from all of the noise and the you know the fluff that’s out there trying to either confuse or distract from what’s really happening it sounds like you’re really quite optimistic quite construction out of the underlying Innovation that’s happening in the space right now talk a little bit about that yeah well I mean you know look I think this is an asset class that may actually not even be an asset class anymore and I say that purposely because I often make comparisons to the ETF market right you would very uh rarely if ever find someone who would say uh I can’t invest in ETFs right now because I don’t believe in that asset class people would be like what are you talking about right are you talking about the you know uh Commodities part of ETFs or the equity part of ETFs or fixed income or actively managed ETFs like what what does that mean right it’s very easy for people to compartmentalize that the ETF is a wrapper or a structure and lots of different things fit into it um you know 10 years ago and even as much as seven years ago the crypto and and and blockchain world really was just sort of currencies right and that’s all anybody thought about but now it’s everything you’ve got currencies you’ve got commodity like assets you’ve got asset backs and equity and bond like assets you’ve got meme coin you’ve got all these different um sectors from gaming and Ai and all the things I mentioned earlier defi it’s it’s really hard to just put crypto in a box um and yet that’s constantly what is being done it’s constantly crypto is uninvestable or crypto is a great asset class or you have to be involved or you can’t be involved and it just doesn’t make any sense there’s there’s parts of crypto that make all the sense in the world there’s parts that don’t um but it’s just grown tremendously and in terms of your question about what’s exciting like yeah there are parts of the industry that are really growing I mean stable coin growth is incredibly impressive um you know the the ability to have all these different chains now supporting defi applications in layer twos is really impressive um the amount of games that are going to be launched uh in 2024 and into 2025 that have been worked on for three or four years is really an impressive suite and it’s probably going to be the next onramp into uh real consumer adoption on some of the deepin applications even if maybe price of the token in some cases is a is ahead of the fundamentals of the project these are real projects touching real people where a lot of the end consumer doesn’t even know it’s being run on a crypto rail so that development is real and again it’s really hard to look at like Bitcoin and deepin in gaming and put them in the same bucket they just they aren’t right in the same way that you know you wouldn’t bring a a long short Equity manager on to talk about gold you know you shouldn’t bring on somebody who’s focused on different Niche sectors of crypto and have them just talk about Bitcoin it just doesn’t make sense they’re totally different just happen to be packaged in the same rapper yeah that’s really interesting talking about this that’s a a significant conceptual shift I think from the way a lot of people perceive it which is as you say as an asset class but essentially what you’re saying is what if this is a more of a a technology driven Revolution where you start to see all of the uh existing traditional Capital Market structures moving onto digital asset decentralized rails probably plus new applications uh that don’t work or don’t uh make sense under traditional Capital Market structures a really interesting concept yeah in fact I I I even purposely don’t use the word revolution and instead use the word Evolution for that reason it’s not necessarily that we’re recreating or that we’re creating anything new a lot of cases we’re just repackaging or recreating it uh in a way that just makes more sense right it’s a natural evolution of Finance it’s a natural evolution of gaming it’s a natural evolution of of of payments and as uh uh uh uh you know the the way to think about asset transfer and collectibles so to me it’s more evolutionary than revolutionary interesting I want to ship gears here a little bit uh and talk about maybe if we were thinking about digital assets crypto in a different context more of a as currently just a risk on asset or a super asset class I wanted to take a look at a clip to just talk a little bit and set up a little bit of the broader macro context right now uh this is from a conversation that actually I had uh with Tanya R uh Martin lnder and Brian Dixon let’s take a look at this clip real quick and then we’ll get your reaction to it first we had GE political tensions that’s always problematic for um asset markets we had the Iran Israel um the Backle happening early in the month somewhat mid-mon um first from the Iranian side then from the Israeli side all the uncertainty that uh that brought to the markets was not good for asset prices but in particular also if pushed oil prices higher and we have had three months three consecutive months where inflation had surpris to the upside pushing rates higher and then on top of that geopolitical tensions are pushing oil prices higher and that’s adding to the pressure on rates so we had the geopolitical tensions adding up to uh oil prices and a rate Outlook that was uh making uh markets very nervous higher rates are of course not great for liquidity and as we know for uh crypto assets liquidity is of Paramount importance so then again on the liquidity side outside the rates Outlook we also had a little bit of an air pocket in liquidity like Michael Howell likes to call it and the reason is we had a pullback in the US because people were paying their taxes so the uh TGA actually Rose midm mon by April 15 which is which was a tax deadline and that pulled liquidity out of the system and on top of that we had other central banks most importantly China that had also pulled back on their liquidity injections for the month so you had if you will a combination of a perfect storm between the tensions the rate outlooks and the liquidity cycle all coming together well there you see Tanya I’ve coming at this from more of a sort of cyclical perspective rather than the broader uh secular structural context that we’re talking about but she mentions a couple things in terms of global macro headwinds uh first geopolitical tensions uh the impact and risk to oil prices and potential rate Outlook the air pocket in liquidity and also China pulling back on their liquidity Jeff thoughts yeah I mean there’s a lot to unpack there and I think you know I’ve been one of the um uh Advocates of crypto’s uncorrelation or non-correlation to traditional assets in macro over the last decade and of course 2022 threw that for a loop because everything went to correlation one um basically because you had a 4 five Sigma uh a change in terms of rate expectations and rate hikes we went into 2022 expecting three cuts of 75 basis points total and of course ended up with what almost 400 basis points or over 400 basis points of of of hikes uh instead of uh just 375 so when you had that kind of a move everything went correlation one you also had obviously the bankruptcies that that infected in crypto so you so you started to build this narrative that hey CTO is just sort of a risk-on asset class and it’s going to get hit just like anything else and it’s just not true right the data over seven or 10 years or even three years shows that this is a pretty uncorrelated asset class so while we look at these macro factors and they certainly uh can matter at times they don’t always matter um and specifically with what was mentioned in that clip um you know the Israel Iran conflict was really interesting because the initial knee-jerk reaction on the very first Oran headline Bitcoin actually went higher with gold um and then on every subsequent uh uh headline it started going down and ultimately led to liquidations and casc and led to momentum Traders and pushing everything down um and it’s hard for me to say in a vacuum if there was weren’t other factors going on that that alone was going to be negative for crypto in fact you know there’s no real historical evidence that Wars in general are are really have any sort of long lasting effect on Equity markets or crypto markets um certainly there’s no uh uh uh empirical data that suggests that oil prices have any real effect on crypto prices but what I will say is that the liquidity is real right when you have periods of increased liquidity Global liquidity um that is obviously good for all risk assets because it increases the flow of money it increases the um uh the riskiness of sitting on cash uh and the opportunity cost of sitting on cash and it does for sure um affect markets what I would point out specifically though to the Israel Iran conflict is that there were a lot of other factors going on that in my opinion were by themselves not necessarily impactful enough to push the digital asset Market down but collectively were enough and the Israel Iran conflict was really just a trigger that pushed selling to a level that created everyone um uh paying attention to the to these other things for example the higher than anticipated inflation prints uh in April uh which resulted in a reduction of the expected Fed rate Cuts this year a Slowdown in the Bitcoin ETF inflows the assumed rejection of the upcoming May spot ETF Unis swap receiving a Wells notice from the SEC uh some unsustainable meme coin advances and money kind of chasing uh uh that from a fomo standpoint rather than investing in real projects um salana even had some performance issues with their blockchain for the first time in I believe over a year um and then of course the tax stay in the US which again there’s no real evidence to suggest that that you know exactly which way this is going to push flows but there’s certainly a you know a one-time impact uh on the US tax uh season so when you put all those things together together that’s a shift from a positive sentiment to a slightly negative sentiment again I don’t think any one of those by themselves was enough to push crypto over the edge when you put them together that’s enough to change sentiment and in my opinion the Israel uh Iran conflict and oil conflict in oil prices was again just a trigger that created some algod driven selling which then turned it into okay momentum trading is going to push this stuff and we’re going to start focusing on the negatives rather than the positives y obviously a lot there and very well said uh a lot of points talking about where these markets are but I want to zoom in on something that you mentioned that I think is so important and it’s the topic of a recent blog post that you wrote that’s our two Satoshi by the way if you’re not reading this blog you should be uh you can go and find it up on the ARA website but this is a blog post called crypto versus the SEC the title says it all there are actually two parts of this we’ll unpack both of them but let’s focus on the regulatory component here because you do a real deep dive on everything that’s happening in the space you present an overview and then you drill down into all the individual cases the Press a really impressive analysis here where are we right now with the regulatory environment for digital Assets in the United States sure um you know I think the regulatory overhang is definitely real and when we talk to investors all over the world and we have a nice you know business development and IR team in addition to our portfolio team here at ARA where we’re constantly traveling and talking to investors over the course of seven years now doing this there’s always been um some constants with regard of the push back we get on crypto and there’s always been some new things two of the constants were always how do you value this and regulation um the regulation issues with investors was incredibly high after 2022 to the point where it was just it was just a non-starter with a lot of people and that veil was lifted almost immediately when Black Rock announced that they were going to enter the Bitcoin ETF um space it was unbelievable just like night and day where investors could no longer use that as an excuse they basically said okay if black Rock’s involved then we’re not able to use this as an excuse anymore um and but it wasn’t just BlackRock getting involved uh or maybe it was the spark but you started to see a real push back from companies and projects in the space who were for the first time willing to take the SEC on um you know head-on um for example you had uh you know Ripple Labs versus the SEC and you had the US District Judge Torres basically saying that Ripple did not violate Federal Securities Law by selling its Ripple tokens that was sort of unique to just Ripple but it definitely had a ripple effect on the next wave of of of SEC fights which was grayscale winning a court order against the SEC in which the SEC was deemed as being arbitrary and capricious um which many believe was actually the final straw in allowing the Bitcoin ETFs to be approved then the SEC got a big win versus coinbase but the coinbase wallet uh itself had a triumph over the SEC allegations which was a giant win for def5 um basically which led to Unis swap now feeling more comfortable turning on their Fe switch now you have consensus joining the fight um you know the new wave uh which I had never seen before in my career usually if you get issued a Wells notice from the SEC you don’t tell anybody you’re kind of quiet about it now it’s like hey we got a Wells notice over here we want to let everyone know we got a Wells notice and we’re gonna fight it um that’s just let me let me read this this is a quote right from the newsletter where you’re quoting Joe lubben because I think it it gives a sense of the temperature at least as it’s perceived right now by the founders in the space I want to read this this is again Joe luin from consensus quote we took this step for two very basic reasons one the SEC should not be allowed to arbitrarily expand its jurisdiction to include regulating the future of the internet and two The sec’s Reckless approach in bringing chaos to developers Market participants institutions and Nations who are building or already managing critical systems running on ethereum the world’s largest platform for decentralized applications I think the one thing that’s notable about this and this is the point that you were making uh if you’ve spent time in the traditional Finance base uh you do not see CEOs of large investment Banks uh publishing blog posts that sound like this uh and taking action against SEC it’s just something that’s not done so it is interesting when we talk about the the temperature in the space the way the space is being perceived it’s a pretty extraordinary moment it is it’s extraordinary I mean I you know I’ve been in this industry or in finance industry now for almost 25 years I I didn’t know the SEC commissioner names until recently it wasn’t something that you cared about I mean you feared the SEC from a respect standpoint you feared them from a law abiding standpoint you certainly listened to your compliance officers and made sure that you followed the law but you didn’t care who was actually in the seat you didn’t think about them in any meaningful way um you certainly didn’t challenge them in this open way which is again it’s it’s a continuation from Black Rock getting involved to these little recent minor wins and you can see again this sort of um you know ripple effect of oh like we’re going to fight this and we have a chance of really winning and you know you know a hat tip to all the larger well capitalized firms in crypto out there who not only have the willingness but also the means to be able to fight this on behalf of the industry I actually had a um we we were lucky enough to have a meeting with Hester Pur um recently I think it was at the end of last year maybe beginning of this year and one of the things of course for people who don’t know is an SEC commissioner who’s been very Pro crypto and has been critical of some of her colleagues in the SEC in regard to their handling of crypto regulation for sure um and and and we had a great uh meeting with her and the one thing that stood out is is she mentioned the reputational damage the SEC um is uh uh taking right now not just from crypto but across the financial industry um in the sense that again the SEC would probably be better off if nobody talks about them certainly would be better off than everybody talking about them and is certainly in a negative way uh and that’s that’s that’s real problems right when you think about any sort of Revolutions in the world or any sort of um you know uh David versus Goliath type stories that’s what it starts with it starts with hey these guys are overstepping their bounds um maybe we didn’t really know about them before but now we do and then there’s a cohort of people who are just like fed up with it and really fight back and again this is not broad-based against the SEC or any particular actions um we’re simply pointing out that there is a cohort now of businesses that are well capitalized and have the means to push things forward where you’re going to have real Clarity uh uh coming to this industry which which you know every project uh founder every investor um every intermediary in this industry has been dying for um you know it’s kind of like I you know when I say you know I didn’t even know the SEC Commissioners names years ago I mean it’s kind of like a good ref or a good umpire it’s probably not great for anyone when they become the story so you know we’ll see if some of these actions uh uh big sweeping changes to uh the actual law as well as again just a massive shift from this sentiment overhang to now a positive sentiment well it is interesting you know when you cover the story you have to try and remain neutral about it but it’s just an extraordinary moment something that we’ve just if you’re if you’re new to this uh space if you’re new to financial services if you’re new to following a regulatory action for example uh this is just very unusual this isn’t something that you see uh Jamie Diamond does not publish blog posts like this I mean you you saw it this week as well when Rob or this week I believe when Robin Hood got the wells notice I mean barely even a blip nobody cared right could you I mean a Wells notice used to be a really big deal if you get a Wells notice it was like oh my God like something bad is happening Robin Hood givs a Wells notice they immediately tell everyone say we’re gonna fight it coinbase jumps on and says we got your back and no the stock barely moved there was no ripple effect in the market like that’s incredibly different than what it used to be like if you had any uh interaction or call out from the SEC yeah very interesting indeed the other thing that you write about that’s really interesting uh that I think it would be great for our viewers to be able to uh listen in on is your view of the challenges in the space right now in terms of the potential misalignments between uh between digital asset creators Founders on the one hand and their investors on the other this I think is really interesting and you’re sort of uniquely positioned to talk about this because of your your prior life in Investment Banking yeah I mean I started my career uh as an investment banking C Capital markets uh employe at Leman brothers and spent a lot of time with new issues um and m&a from the fixed income and the equity markets so I definitely you know have seen the way it’s historically done in traditional markets versus where we are today and and you know not to Pile in the SEC stuff here but I mean there’s definitely that is definitely part of why and how new issues in the token Market are being delivered the way they are because the SEC has someone has so many lawyers and project Founders and exchanges living in fear in terms of how to actually issue and list a token um but that being said there’s still things that are in my opinion just being done completely wrong um not not not just different but flat out wrong um because there’s just you know hundreds of years of evidence of how to do it right in the debt and Equity Market versus what we’re doing in tokens and you’re talking about now the the actual structure of the uh of the of the tokens and the way that the relationships to the investors not the regulatory correct right I’m talking about the structure of the tokens but also just the listing process so so so to back up for a second right we had 2007 we had icos icos was basically we’re just going to spin up a website say we’re going to issue this token and anybody can participate retail or accredited investor uh you’ll get your tokens and we’ll see what happens right ethereum’s a best example of that ethereum you know ran one of the more successful iOS of just you can turn in your Bitcoin for some ethereum and as a result you had very early um uh investors and users who were aligned properly right one of the things that Drew me to crypto was that in my in my opinion crypto is the greatest Capital formation and customer bootstrapping mechanism that we’ve ever seen because it fully aligns your shareholders or your token holders with your customers right if you’re an early power user of uh of a network or of a project um and you also get compensated for being early and for helping to bootstrap the growth then you become a power user for life you become an evangelist for life you become exactly that sticky user that a project is looking for right the the the ant antithesis to that is something like imagine if you were the first ever Amazon Amazon Prime member and you were crucial to getting Amazon Prime off the ground but you still pay the exact same amount in annual Amazon Prime fees as everyone else you didn’t get any Amazon shares you got no benefit from being somebody who pushed that together or you can go any further you can go to Reddit and look at that you can go to you know McDonald’s and look at the the the misalignment between the customers of McDonald’s versus the shareholders right I think I saw a ven diagram once where it was basically like 99.9% of shareholders of am of McDonald’s don’t actually shop there right so we’ve always had these misalignment and crypto in my opinion was bringing that back and the icos were a big part of that you look at some of the early success stories and there there’s no doubt in my mind that a lot of their success is because that early users were getting compensated for being early were being encouraged to be power users and were being encouraged to be evangelists um you fast forward to where we are now and of course everyone’s terrified of of selling tokens especially in the US and certainly to retail that we’ve come to this backwards way of of hey’re only going to sell tokens in private rounds to uh uh Venture funds and then eventually we might airdrop the token to you and list it on an exchange and well I don’t think it I don’t think um that was bad in spirit but what it’s what’s happening now is you’re kind of turning into the equity markets where you know nobody’s in a rush to IPO anymore you can stay private as long as you can the same thing is sort of happening in the digital asset world now where it’s let’s just keep marking up these private rounds because these Venture funds have unlimited money and they just want to continue to buy and support the project until they actually list the token which gets listed artificially high and goes straight down and then all of a sudden the support is gone and if you look at the new issues that have been listed on coinbase or on binance specifically they’re all going straight down and And to clarify what I mean by this is there’s a couple different participants in a new issue process right first is the founders or the project owners who come up with the uh token and and the tokenomics and the schedule of who’s going to get what and investing schedules and all that you obviously have some consultants in there in my opinion are giving terrible advice but Consultants who are helping uh these projects design the tokens then you have the exchanges who list them for you um then you have the market makers who are basically being gifted tokens by the project and and and are in charge of sort of ensuring liquidity um and then of course you have the Venture investors and then the new investors who come in and buy this stuff on exchanges what’s missing there is the investment bank or the the the middleman who actually is in charge of figuring out what is the clearing price when you look at Investment Banking when you see an IPO or a bond deal there is a long road show there’s a long process in terms of figuring out where is their demand what price is they going to be demand at maybe there’s independent research firms writing about it saying hey this stock should price at this valuation based on where other stocks are or this Bond should come at an 8% yield based on where comps are there’s all this thought and discussion that goes into where it prices and then after it prices the Investment Bank who brings it the bookrunner actually has to take risk in terms of making markets um and as a result there’s League tables League tables are a celebration of hey how did that stock or Bond trade in the first day the first week the first month and they take a lot of Pride and saying this stalker Bond traded up for a month because we did a great job of pricing it we did a great job of supporting it none of that’s happening in crypto what happens is the VCS get their private valuations the market makers get free tokens and take no risk the founders take no risk the exchanges take no risk they spit it out there at some arbitrary price with no thought and then it goes straight down and it and it makes absolutely no sense and there are better ways to do this it’s so interesting I mean it’s an absolute clinic on the way that banking takes place it’s also interesting because you know in many ways maybe the the crypto utopian view was that we were going to have decentralized markets disintermediated from investment Banks and somehow we were magically going to arrive at Accurate uh and uh fair price Discovery it sounds like what you’re saying is that’s not happening it it’s not at all and and look I I believe in the invisible hand right I think the price of an asset will probably get to the same place regardless of how it gets there um the difference is the future price is very much determined by the path that it takes meaning let’s take a token that that the world thinks is worth you know let’s just say it’s it should trade at $30 okay and let’s say there’s private um uh Investments That push this thing up to $60 in in in the private round and then they’re the Venture investors who are marking it at 60 because that’s the last round are whispering to the market makers and the exchanges you got to list this at 80 or 90 or 100 uh because then it’s a markup from where we last listed it but ultimately it’s going to get to 30 anyway um well all you’re doing by listing it artificially high is you’re basically incentivizing everybody who got early to sell it as fast as you can down to that 30 price now let’s take the opposite let’s say that everybody knows it’s worth 30 even though the last round was at 60 let’s say we list it at 10 and we give people a chance to buy it before it goes to 30 and it goes up 300% well again in my opinion it’s getting to 30 anyway but the difference is in the first scenario everybody’s incentivized to sell the market makers know it’s going straight down but they don’t care because they’re not taking risk it’s the founders who are giving them the tokens for free the exchanges don’t care because they’re not taking any risk and it just goes down to 30 and everyone’s pissed off nobody made any money on it and everyone just forgets about this project and for the next five years it just languishes in the flip side yeah maybe the founders and the early investors give up a little bit of money because you price it at 10 bucks but now you’re giving people access to at a more fair price and giving them a chance to make money giving you a chance to be evangelists and power users and actually care about it maybe the Venture firms that were going to be sellers at 90 instead of being sellers at 10 they actually become buyers at 10 they’re like you know what we were going to sell it but since it’s so much lower than we last bought it we’re actually going to buy it and support it more you get to the same place but the path function matters and there’s a reason League tables exist there’s a reason investment Banks care about the aftermarket performance because it matters it changes sentiment it changes Outlook um you know look at Facebook IPO back in uh whenever that was 2011 or 2012 right it was just an absolute terribly run process by Morgan State Stanley at all it came at 40 it immediately went down to 20 it took 2 years to get it back to where it should have been and then ultimately it went up to 300 or wherever it went right that same thing could have been listed at five or 10 and it might have gotten to 300 or 400 even faster because you actually created uh uh this less negative environment and actually allowed people besides the early Venture investors to make money so you know as a call out to binance and coinbase and to the market makers and to the consultants and to the VCS and to the founders there is a better way to do this and stop acting like it’s the status quo just because everybody’s doing je for people who may be hearing about this for the first time who may be getting their first view uh really of the detailed perspective that you have on how these icos work let me ask you this bearing in mind the sketch you’ve just drawn for us what is a retail person who’s out there following this uh to do what does it mean for them sure and I should probably throw a disclaimer on there that this is not investment advice but I mean look the the term do your own research is real right I mean obviously ultimately it is up to you buy or beware you have to figure it out on your own that being said um a lot of cases there’s no ability to do that right again the exchanges whether they like it or not are the deao investment Banks they’re the ones listing it they’re the ones putting it out there but they’re not putting any research or any price targets or anything out there right so the retail investor is flying a little bit blind in a lot of these cases um at a minimum they should be pushing back with the exchanges and at a minimum they should be on crypto Twitter and asking more questions like hey does anyone have opinions on where this should price or what’s fair value for this or what does the token unlock schedule look like uh you know what’s the token generation event how many of the tokens are immediately going to vest with these Venture firms that they’re going to dump right away I mean this information is out there and granted it’s easier for a firm like ARCA with 30 employees and you know hundreds of millions of dollars of capital to to sniff this stuff out and have a uh have a real opinion that it is for retail um but I can tell you like we haven’t touched a single new token listing and we have one of the larger liquid funds out there we wouldn’t touch one of these coinbase or binance new issue listings because they’re just the process is so horribly run um so as a cautionary tale at least I wouldn’t tell anybody not to buy something but I would tell them that there’s Al often a lot more information out there that if you spend a little bit of time looking at uh you’ll realize that maybe it’s not a fair game Jeff what a powerful statement of course as you point out not investment advice we’re just here to have this conversation uh and to get these voices heard Jee really a incredible incredible ation here today uh We’ve covered a lot of different ground from the macro backd jop to the technology to some of the challenges as you perceive them in the current listing uh and creation structure process final thoughts key takeaways that you’d like to leave our listeners and our viewers with from this conversation sure I I think you know the best advice or or or or um ideas I have right now is that this is a really power powerful technology right again the package the wrapper of blockchain and what it can mean for all these different sectors and industries is real right again from AI to Banking and finance to um uh you know uh real world assets and and uh uh gaming this is powerful and it’s really exciting and even though there’s a lot of fluff out there the good stuff is really good and the more we can talk um in a way that actually educates the end investor and the end user uh that actually helps separate um some of the meme coins versus the real stuff the better and what I mean by that is like you know again we all saw what happened with with meme stocks in 2021 and 2022 with things like AMC and Bed Bath and Beyond and GameStop if that was the first thing that an equity investor saw they’d probably say I’m never going to invest in equities ever again this is rigged this is stupid I couldn’t touch this but instead because we had so many uh you know uh Decades of other examples in the equity Market of real companies most people were able to compartmentalize that and say you know what that’s kind of a sideshow it’s kind of weird go have your fun but that doesn’t represent the equity Market the same thing is true in the digital asset world where there’s always going to be some weird things you know maybe there’s some you know couple things of fraud here and there maybe there’s uh uh meme coins here and there but that’s not representative of the industry There’s real building happening There’s real technology underpinning this there’s real differentiation between types of tokens and types of Industries and the more we can educate people to to look Beyond uh the sound bite and look beyond the thing that is up or down a th% or down 100% in in in a month uh it would be almost impossible for any educated investor to actually look at this space in a real way and say I’m not willing to invest in that you might say there’s pockets of it that you don’t want to invest in it but to broadly say you won’t touch crypto or tokens is is just baffling to me honestly for someone who as someone who has studied this now for six years there is just so much positive and so much uh a real value here it’s incredible incredible to me that so many people can dismiss it well it’s interesting you know it reminds me almost of uh the 18th uh Century where you hear about uh this new form of innovation called the joint stock company you look at some of the spectacular implosions frauds John Law the Mississippi company the south sea bubble I mean history is Rife with these examples of uh The Innovation uh being used simultaneously as a conduit for fraud on the one hand and as a more efficient way uh to allocate capital and distribute risk on the other I mean it’s just such a fascinating metaphor when you talk about it that yeah it really is and also just the intellectual curiosity too again like if you’re an investor in any way shape or form or an innovator or just a highly educated person I would think you would want to learn about this it’s just fascinating it’s new it’s interesting there’s so many different Pockets that you can dive into uh you know again that’s to me that’s more important than anything right now is just better educating in fact I you know I I fortunately had some spent some time with the folks at Black Rock a couple weeks ago and I just flat out I just said you know this is how I would explain ethereum if you’re ever going to push an ethereum ETF and all I said was forget talking about ethereum as a supercomputer or a network or all these things you hear it’s just it’s the app store right ethereum is the Apple App Store salana is you know uh Android the competitor uh when they when when an app store first launches it’s a blank canvas it has some value because of what it could be one day but there’s nothing actually happening until the apps are built inside of it and then you get your banking apps and your gaming apps and your you know payment apps and all of a sudden there’s a flourishing ecosystem and all these transactions and fees are happening and effectively the App Store becomes super valuable that’s all it is and he looked at me he’s like we’re going to steal that I hope you know I hope you don’t mind I’m like please please do because it’s just a better easier analogy than some of the stuff that’s floating around out there um you know shout out to Matt hugan at bitwise who I saw probably had the best explanation of layer twos ever he basically said think about when you go to a bar um would it be super efficient for the bartender to every single time there’s a transaction to make you pay with cash no you’re bundle it all up and pay at the end that’s what a layer two does I mean these are easy analogies that help explain this space and the more we educate then the more willing uh people are as users and investors are going to be to dive into the real stuff and stop just paying attention to the fluff Hey listen talking of intellectual curiosity if you want to hear more about this go up to the Arco website so you can check out that’s our two Satoshi which Jeff Dorman writes Jeff thanks so much for joining us always a pleasure always a great conversation love being here Ash thanks again for uh for having us and uh more power to you and all your guests and everything you’re doing on the education front thanks CHF and I should say talking about the intellectual curiosity front we can finally reveal that real Vision crypto team is complete and completed by none other than wrecked guy co-founders OSF baroo and Michael Mando Anderson once a month they will host a drinks with OSF and Mando session exclusively for real Vision crypto members where they’ll cover everything from the macro landscape to meme coins to nfts and more the first one is happening this Friday May 10 at 12:00 p.m. eastern time and for three days only we’re discounting the price of joining real Vision crypto so if you’ve missed the launch now is the best time to join just go to realvision dcom RVC that’s realvision doccom RVC to learn more if you’re already a real Vision member be sure to check your email thank you all so much for watching and for listening to real Vision Daily Briefing we will be back tomorrow same time same place see you then have a great afternoon everybody
Jeff Dorman, co-founder and CIO of Arca, joins Ash Bennington to explore how recent macroeconomic data impacts cryptocurrencies, what the SEC Wells notice to Robinhood means for the broader crypto industry, and how digital asset supply-demand dynamics are evolving.
🔥 30% OFF RV Crypto until May 10 https://rvtv.io/44e8Yj0
We can finally share that the RV Crypto team is now complete… with none other than rektguy co-founders Ovie “OSF” Faruq and Michael “Mando” Anderson. For 3 days only, you can join RV Crypto at a discounted price — if you missed the initial launch, now is the best time to join. Go to https://rvtv.io/44e8Yj0 to learn more.
Elevate your brand with Real Vision. Connect with us at partnerships@realvision.com to explore advertising possibilities.
#financialmarkets #macro #realvision #cryptomarkets #sec #bitcoin #ethereum #cryptocurrency #ico
About Real Vision™:
We arm you with the knowledge, tools, and network to succeed on your financial journey.
Connect with Real Vision™ Online:
Website: https://www.realvision.com
Twitter: https://rvtv.io/twitter
Instagram: https://rvtv.io/instagram
Facebook: https://rvtv.io/facebook
Linkedin: https://rvtv.io/linkedin
00:00 – Intro
00:50 – Where Are We In The Crypto Markets
05:05 – The Evolution Of Crypto
06:25 – The Macro Backdrop
12:35 – The SEC vs Crypto
19:55 – The Challenges In The Space For Investors
26:20 – The Pricing of Initial Coin Offerings
Disclaimer: https://media.realvision.com/wp/20231004185303/Disclaimer-1.pdf