The New Era of Web3 Is About to Begin - GSR CEO | E164

Why now is the right moment to focus on tokenization?

There's a lot of misconception about tokenization. The market hasn't really

tokenization. The market hasn't really developed yet. There's a lot of people

developed yet. There's a lot of people that are supplying asset, but the demand side hasn't really come yet, but we think it's going to happen in the next few years. And one of the other thing is

few years. And one of the other thing is learning that the market's got to be big enough. This is a [ __ ] huge market.

enough. This is a [ __ ] huge market.

How huge is it?

Nobody knows right now, but the best estimate is 15 to 30 trillion. Chin, the

group CEO [music] of GSR Markets, a global digital asset trading firm providing institutional liquidity across 200 [music] plus assets and 25 fiat currencies.

A leader scaling GSR's [music] global strategy across trading, OTC, and token markets.

What needs to happen for this 10% of 300 trillion securities market to be on chain? Like any two-sided market, you

chain? Like any two-sided market, you got to find the other side. There's a

lot of supply. They can't actually find buyers. The obvious starting point for

buyers. The obvious starting point for us is helping the foundations to diversify their holdings.

Why do market makers in crypto have a bad reputation? It's an underregulated

bad reputation? It's an underregulated market. There's not enough people out

market. There's not enough people out there that want to do things the right way. They want to optimize for

way. They want to optimize for short-term gains. They're transactional.

short-term gains. They're transactional.

There isn't enough enforcement. How do

we fix the crypto market's reputation?

Change the structure. Why does Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan not have a reputational problem? Because they've

reputational problem? Because they've been doing it for years like us. And

generally, they've been doing the right thing. Because actually, you can do well

thing. Because actually, you can do well and do good at the same time. But

[music] that has to come together with a structure and regulation that removes potential conflicts of interest.

Moving to crypto, teach us. What do you realize that most people in crypto still don't understand that? Hey, we're

actually not better than Tatify.

Yeah. Um,

hi everyone. This is the little bit that I know none of you like that can help us make a huge difference for this show and we want to take it next. 71% of the people who regularly watch When Shift

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I was always thinking if I go to bed at 2 2:00 a.m. and I wake up at 10 a.m.

That's 8 hours sleep. Well, that's 6 hours sleep.

That's actually 6 hours sleep. like six

and a half sometimes, but it's still way too low. And I'm like, "Oh, shit." So, I

too low. And I'm like, "Oh, shit." So, I need to spend much more time in bed actually to be able to sleep more.

Yeah. But the body clock, like, it's not just about how much you sleep. It's also

like when you sleep, right?

For sure. For sure.

The circadian circadian rhythm.

Going to sleep at 2 a.m. is terrible.

Yeah. My my body age would probably show I'm six years older than I am. Actually,

I might look six years younger.

I wanted to [laughter] say you look it's the Asian It's the Asian gene. How old

are you?

How young are you?

39.

39.

Yes.

Yeah, we definitely [snorts] look uh 35.

Ask you to guess first. Yeah.

Yeah. I think we're a similar age. No.

Yeah, we're similar age.

Yeah.

You're 35 and I'm 34.

That's right. [laughter]

If only. If only. Hey,

got to hit the gym more often.

Do I wish?

If only.

I don't know. No, I'm happy the way I am.

Who wants to live forever? Hey, let's

let's make the most of what we have.

Yeah. [laughter]

[snorts] What's the advantage of uh age and maturity?

Um [snorts] what's the advantage of age and maturity?

Wisdom. Knowing that you [ __ ] up before and trying not to [ __ ] up again.

Yes.

Give me an example of [ __ ] up. [snorts]

So I think in my startup experience right before I joined GSR we were one of

the earliest market makers on Darabit in crypto options with my own hedge fund.

I think that was a great learning experience. I think that what were we

experience. I think that what were we doing then? who were market makers in a

doing then? who were market makers in a very nent asset class in a niche asset which is crypto in a niche

instrument which was options right 2018 2018 yeah and I remember this was when Bitcoin was

around $3,000 something like that imagine that hey we think 60,000 is low but back down at $3,000

I remember the quarterly expiry in March when market makers have to hedge but they can't hedge without enough people trading on the other side right and so

we had a draw down that time because it takes time for us to hedge our position in the

market and the market gapped up from $3,000 to $5,000 like that overnight. Do

you remember that time?

Is this October 2018?

It must have been I think it was in the spring of 19.

Yeah, early 19. Then I remember I remember because I bought my first two Bitcoin just before that at 3.2 or 3.5 market. [laughter]

market. [laughter] I knew it.

I screwed your business.

I knew it. Right. It was fake.

Actually, I remember because I bought my first two Gitcoin at 3.5K each for 7K.

And then I felt like a genius because literally like maybe a month later I was doing a three month in Asia tour like a trip for fun and like Bitcoin pumped to like 5K. I'm like

like 5K. I'm like I'm a legend. Okay.

So you had a great holiday on the back of uh screwing me as the market maker, right? [laughter]

right? [laughter] Well, what do we say? Uh

I mean I don't know the expression in English, but like the the what makes people what makes some people happy makes other people sad.

Yes. There's the [laughter] [snorts] shard and Freud. Oh, no. That's

something else. That's being happy at other people's sadness, right? You're

happy at my sadness now. Huh? [laughter]

Okay.

No, but like there is I mean zero sum games right?

Yes. Zero sum game. But the point is, you know, I think the learning was you got to pick a big enough market, right, that is worth going after. I think at that point crypto options was very nent.

We were trying to grow the market.

So difficult. Number two, risk management is hard. You have to try and, you know, control what you can control, but you can't control everything. You

can't control all the external environment.

You can't control someone uh in a very illquid market pumping the market with [laughter] back in the day that that was that was the market, dude, right? Like it was

very thinly traded and you didn't need a lot of money to to make uh gains and it was even less regulated than today. And

so there was, you know, some manipulation and there were people that were purposefully putting positions out of the money on the derivatives

markets to be able to move the the the spot market with relatively little money and uh make leveraged gains off of it.

So uh yeah, congratulations whoever that was. But um the what they call it is

was. But um the what they call it is picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. I think that's the frame

steamroller. I think that's the frame that that's the the term, right? So you

are making gains little bit little bit and then you have a draw down because this type of external risk is not something you can control in a particularly liquid market. So that was I wouldn't call it a [ __ ] but was

learning experience for sure and drives how I think about going into new businesses. Yeah.

businesses. Yeah.

Who are you except a young looking Asian with an age six years older than your age?

Forever 18. Right. Let's uh [laughter] if [snorts] only um I who am I? It's a

broad question. I would say I'm a human being. First, this is not AI. This is not a deep fake. I've been

AI. This is not a deep fake. I've been

That's why we do that before. That's why

we do that in in studio actually.

Yeah, I'm real, right?

To make sure not on.

He's real. He's a trafi extraati. And

he's nice. It exists. I was joking with um Casper Yansen, the founder of Spartan. Yesterday we met and uh we

Spartan. Yesterday we met and uh we talked about you actually.

Oh, no wonder. That's why he pinged me out of the blue. He said, "Let's catch."

Exactly. That's why. And and he was like, "He's a Trafy guy and he's nice.

They exist."

Yeah, they exist.

Nice guys can win, I think. I hope.

Yeah.

So, um who am I? I'm I'm a human being.

I'm a family man, I think, first and foremost. Right. Um before before being

foremost. Right. Um before before being a CEO, I'm a father, a son, a husband, first and foremost. And why do I say that? I think for me at least

that? I think for me at least personally, family is super important.

It's, you know, kind of [snorts] the bedrock behind everything else that I do because we work in a crazy industry, right? Without some stability and

right? Without some stability and domestic bliss, I think I would find it super hard to do my job. And so, you know, having a settled family life, good health, touchwood. We got to keep going

health, touchwood. We got to keep going to the gym, Kevin. All right. To keep

that going. But um that allows me to to do my job. And so family first and and I think I learned a lot through my upbringing through what my parents taught me as well that I carry into life

in general but but work in particular as well. Yeah.

well. Yeah.

What did you learn from your parents?

A few things. So I mean they have an interesting story. So they grew up in in

interesting story. So they grew up in in China during the cultural revolution, right? So they were born in the late

right? So they were born in the late 50s. This was a time of famine, right?

50s. This was a time of famine, right?

in China, not not a lot of abundance, pretty scarce everything, food, um, resources.

Government decided to send all the young kids that were university age back to the the countryside to [snorts] go and farm the the fields again cuz there wasn't enough food on the table. So,

they had rations etc. They got their university education delayed by 3 years.

They went through that. Despite that,

they retook their exams, got scholarships, came to the UK. I was born in China but grew up in the UK and they

set up uh [snorts] a a good stable life for me right to go and do other things.

So you know from relative poverty to middle class stability um and a very I guess traditional career so they were academics primarily right and they

stayed in universities and stayed almost in the same job for the their whole life that doesn't exist anymore. What did

that teach me? I think a few things.

Number one, the ability to take on some risk, be being comfortable with risk cuz they went through it, right? They went

other side of the world, relatively little uh money and you know language capabilities. They left me at home aged

capabilities. They left me at home aged one to grow up with my grandparents and I didn't see them till I was five, right? The age of my son now today. I

right? The age of my son now today. I

don't have an early memory of them and they forged life for themselves.

comfortable with taking risk, being willing to grind it out and, you know, having grit and determination. My mom

worked a couple of jobs, you know, retrained as a as an accountant, did night jobs to, you know, put food on the table for the family. [snorts] My dad tried to be an entrepreneur several times. He's a a university academic, but

times. He's a a university academic, but he tried to commercialize his research and develop uh biodegradable sustainable alternatives to to plastics, you know,

for packaging and things like that. It

was a bit ahead of his time. He's almost

70 now. He's still trying to do that on the side with with his students, you know, taking taking the lead on the day-to-day. So, you know, grit and

day-to-day. So, you know, grit and determination and also I think um in terms of like the willingness to to keep learning

new things, right? That I like that I I like learning new things, whether it's a a new sport or or you know, learning a new role. My role has changed over time

new role. My role has changed over time at GSR. Being a CEO means you got to communicate and you got to, you know, have an audience. And I've been

challenging myself to learn about, you know, podcasts. I've been consuming

know, podcasts. I've been consuming podcasts for a long time. We we hired Frank. You guys, you know, Frank well

Frank. You guys, you know, Frank well [snorts] he's great at this. He, you

know, put me in touch with you. I want

to learn from the best how this is done because it's such a great medium for communicating, for learning information since like the late last year at, you

know, set myself a New Year's resolution. listen to podcasts whenever

resolution. listen to podcasts whenever I have some spare time in a car, in the gym is a great way to consume new information. So, I learned that from

information. So, I learned that from them as well. I think those those three things primarily quick one. I want to thank our partners

quick one. I want to thank our partners who help us make this show possible. I'd

like to thank our friends at Jupiter, the DeFi super app. Anything you want to do on chain from trading to earning yield, you can just use Jupiter.

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your phone. 10 times faster and 10 times cheaper than the competition. You're

going to love it. Thank you to the awesome team at Castard, my go-to card to spend my stable coins directly with my Apple Pay to buy anything, food, coffee, hotel night, or plane tickets

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To support this show, please check the sponsor links in the description down below.

Before we go into GSR, we're here to learn.

People are pretty depressed right now because markets are not not so great.

What a year.

You are the CEO of the GSR, one of the biggest market and probably one of the oldest if not the oldest market maker in crypto. [snorts]

crypto. [snorts] You're also a trader previously trader.

I have been. Yeah. A portfolio manager.

Not trading directly but thinking about the strategies, researching them, implementing them with our trading team.

Yeah.

You understand markets, you understand market making, you understand crypto. What's happening?

What what a crazy year we've had. Eh, um

I mean, let's rewind one year because I think that's when this cycle really took off. And a year ago, we had new

off. And a year ago, we had new administration in the US. People were

euphoric, very happy, going crazy. Um we

went from enforcement action against everything in crypto exchanges, market makers, issuers to you know a new administration, new

you know SEC chair and [snorts] facilitation of crypto right maybe too much some would say memecoin craze and and everything that happened around that

but definitely bullish sentiment all-time highs then you know digital asset treasuries helping bring new attention and interest into the market

from institutions and then second half of the year different story right then we had of course the liquidations you know in 1010 in October and market

sentiment completely collapsed I think at one point you know the fear greed index was lower than post FDX I think that's that's mad right I remember those times um I think it's

overdone and we can talk about why but you crypto hasn't recovered like some of the other assets in the market, right?

Like uh you know, gold and and silver in particular recently. It's still really

particular recently. It's still really positioned as a risk asset or by the market, right? Not thought of a as a as

market, right? Not thought of a as a as a you know, safe asset and a flight to safety.

AI stocks have been sucking the the kind of risk capital out on the market, but that is starting to wobble a little bit as well in terms of overspending on data centers and you know GPUs and things

like that. Question marks emerging there

like that. Question marks emerging there and uh now even more geopolitical risk.

So sentiment's super low. You know we've had we've seen a collapse down to 60k buying opportunity. you know, it's

buying opportunity. you know, it's bounced a bit since then, but I think it's indicative of the market being broken in a few different ways.

What does that mean?

Right.

Broken market structure.

Yeah. What does that mean?

Broken in, in my opinion, in a few ways, right? So, number one, I think just

right? So, number one, I think just we're too short-termist. I touched on that a little bit earlier. Post FDX, I think, was way worse in terms of where

the market was at, right? But it's it just shows you people focus on on the short term and they don't have much memory of long changes. It's crazy. It

never changes.

So much fun out there. It's fun about market makers, right? I farted about exchanges. Every, you know, other day I

exchanges. Every, you know, other day I get asked, "Oh, are you guys okay?" Yes,

we're okay. We actually, you know, made money net positive P&L on 1010. We

learned some things, right? But I think, you know, we're fine. And exchanges

learned some things. the market

structure isn't what it needs to be, but they're fine. But if you look at the

they're fine. But if you look at the medium-term and the long term, I'm still bullish crypto. I think in the

bullish crypto. I think in the medium-term, this year is midterm year, like there's going to be some change in terms of rate cuts, the monetary policy in terms of liquidity coming back into the market

through money printing, quantitative easing should be positive risk assets.

As we said, Bitcoin and Ethereum, Salana, certainly other sort of alts definitely still seen as risk assets right now. So, I think there's going to

right now. So, I think there's going to be a little tailwind second half of this year, Touchwood. [snorts] And um longer

year, Touchwood. [snorts] And um longer term, hey, geopolitical risk and what's happening with the world reordering itself. We can talk about that later if

itself. We can talk about that later if you want. That's got to be bullish

you want. That's got to be bullish crypto, right? AI and the long-term

crypto, right? AI and the long-term impact and you know agentic AI needing to have a currency that is programmable that they understand that they can

transact in that they can invest and generate yield and that that's got to be bullish right so that's one way I think the market is is sort of off and broken and too focused on on short-term we've

been around as you said a long time right 12 years been around in this space been through many cycles only lossmaking year was post FDX that

that year. We took our time. We

that year. We took our time. We

recovered our money, you know, 2 and a half years later down the line, having been part of the process with the ad hoc committee to get a good deal for depositors on FDX. So, we're relaxed,

right? We, you know, we we see the the

right? We, you know, we we see the the turmoil, but we're relaxed. I think the second way the market is a little broken is the venues that we trade on, they

still don't work as well as they should work. This means that the infrastructure

work. This means that the infrastructure is not there makers to do their job properly.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot of criticism that goes to market makers. I'm I'm not saying it's the blame of the exchanges.

I think it's something that we collectively have to solve as an industry and and we'll talk about why. I don't you know like to to you know throw shade on

competitors or or partners. But I think collectively we got to do better and we can learn from trades some basic things like I don't know circuit breakers right they're there for a reason why reinvent

the wheel right you you're a previous black rock so you understand really well let's continue this tell me the difference between black because in

crypto everyone is [ __ ] uh on trfire all the time right and each other we like to [ __ ] on each other as well I think that's pretty unhealthy right I think we should uh that's very true actually banned B

bander brothers and actually very true I was uh every time I'm talking every time I'm talking to Hunter the co-founder of Bitwise because Bise they do these ETFs for you

know Solana XRP everything yeah so they're kind of like like they're like oh they're like a gsr or like a when

shift happens they're kind of neutral to the markets and the project not as affiliated to a specific ecosystem it was saying like it's already so hard

to push crypto forward, but we're making it even harder because we're just [ __ ] on each other instead of like supporting each other and like all fighting together.

100%.

It's so [ __ ] It is. Yeah. And I'm happy to talk more

It is. Yeah. And I'm happy to talk more about that, right? Because like my view is that we shouldn't be competing with each other at this point. that the industry

is growing so rapidly, right, that it's uh we we should be trying to focus on creating a bigger pie and it's not, you know, mature yet so that we're at the

stage of like Coca-Cola versus Pepsi fighting for market share because it's a duopoly right?

But in terms of liquidity and developers, ecosystem are definitely competing against one another because that's the kind of scarce resource, right? because these pockets of equity,

right? because these pockets of equity, they're just like all the same and just like going from one ecosystem to another.

I think that's one of the main issues here is it it's realizing there's maybe not enough new liquidity.

We're not able to attract more people and more money in crypto or at least not at the at the pace that we wish. Therefore, we have to fight

wish. Therefore, we have to fight against each other and [ __ ] on each other.

Yeah.

There's so many things we could expand on there if you want to, but I'd rather I'd rather I'd rather look at as an extr stratifi move into crypto.

Teach us tell us hey guys like for example you're saying the infrastructure is not even there for market makers to do their job properly.

What else kind of shocks you? Or

do you realize that most people in crypto still don't understand that, hey, we're actually not better than Tatify?

Yeah, I think the other one that affects what we do dayto-day is the way the market structure is set up for new issuances, right?

What do you mean by market structure?

Think about how market makers work with issuers today. Right? You've had lots of

issuers today. Right? You've had lots of other market makers on the show before.

I don't need to repeat the details, but I think you know people roughly understand how the loan and option model works. Mhm.

works. Mhm.

What I'm saying is that that is just representative of one category of participants that would

naturally need to sell into the market as tokens go from the primary markets to the secondary markets and become liquid, right?

You're basically saying that the that the incentives of different players are not necessarily aligned with token holders are not we're not really doing something here that is

all pulling us or pushing us together into the next dimension or level but we're doing some stuff that is kind of self hurting.

Yeah, I think that's fair and it's different to how it works in Trafire, right? So,

Trafire, right? So, how does it work in Trafy? Let's let's

talk about how it works in crypto first and then we'll go to Trafi. So within

crypto the foundations will sell upon liquid events, right? Happening

like they get listed on an exchange. The

foundations need to liquidate tokens to fund future product development and runway. Why do

they need to do that? Well, generally

speaking, at the point of liquidity, they haven't necessarily found product market fit yet. or maybe they have but not enough to be cash flow positive,

have enough revenue to self- sustain, right? So, they have to sell some tokens

right? So, they have to sell some tokens to keep the lights on and pay their people. That's normal. Okay, that's

people. That's normal. Okay, that's

understandable. In Trafi, typically, well, maybe 25 years ago, you know, tech companies, two guys in a garage and and a PowerPoint could get listed, but these

days the thresholds are higher. in some

markets like in these this part of the world, you need to be profitable, right?

To to get listed, you need to make money. Not true everywhere, but um what

money. Not true everywhere, but um what I'm saying, the threshold got higher over time. So that's a sort of

over time. So that's a sort of regulatory piece.

Uh what else? Market makers do need to sell to hedge their positions to be delta neutral, right? We're not doing anything we shouldn't be doing. We we

tell our clients this. The market knows that this is the status quo and the default way people operate. Nothing to

hide.

But that's more selling pressure, you know, at launch. And

in Tradfi, that's different, right?

There's a different model. You have in equity markets, let's take the US, you have an underwriting process. You have

people that will invest their own balance sheet to buy equities before they become listed, right? They distribute them to

listed, right? They distribute them to institutional investors. They will then

institutional investors. They will then use their own capital to create liquidity once that IPO has happened. [snorts] Are

we going to move to towards that model?

Maybe. I don't know. It could happen if the regulations suggest that they move in that direction. It could be healthy even, right? So project projects coming

even, right? So project projects coming to market later with more product market fit. Let's think about the clarity act

fit. Let's think about the clarity act and how that that will differentiate between when a you know token moves from being a security to a commodity decentralization and and [snorts]

product market fit then an underwriting process and not like the loan and option model that will change things as well.

And then finally um retail and and other VC investors right so for years ever since Coin List went out of fashion I remember you know participating in Coin

List um ICOs as a retail you could do that before that got you know cut down and what happened is VCs participated in

you know low valuation levels retail only were able to get in at the very end pre-listing through airdrops typically in assets that they didn't fully understand because they haven't

necessarily followed the journey. They

haven't been able to participate from the ground floor up and it's purely speculative because they're not users, they're not developers, they're not tied

into the ecosystem.

You could fit that model and say let's have regulated ICOs again and let's uh let retail get in early and have less selling pressure. So if we change these

selling pressure. So if we change these things, maybe the whole industry will be a little healthier. But who has the incentive to do these changes? If you

think about it, foundations or projects don't need to build a product or profitable company or project in order to be able to cash in. Amazing for them.

Market makers, they make money anyway.

Uh exchanges, the more IPOs, I mean, the more ICOs, the more token launches, the more money.

VCs, if they can get early and they can make their money and do this one after the other, they make money. Yeah,

it's all completely against long-term benefits of crypto, but there's no one who has proper incentive to change that.

Yeah, I think it's a great point. It's

true. It's a problem, right? But we've

been saying this for some time and we've been part of self-regulatory organizations that try to implement some changes. That's weak governance. We've

changes. That's weak governance. We've

tried getting regulated, right? We've we

were one of the first to get licensed in tier one jurisdictions like Singapore, like UK. We're, you know, actively

like UK. We're, you know, actively looking at the US right now. That will

help, but that's going to take time for regulators to understand because a lot of it's just education, right? Even

auditors, like we have to educate auditors, how do we run our business?

We've been, you know, clean audited for for four years in a row. Still, that's

not enough. So, so what what's required?

Well, [snorts] as corny as it sounds, like, you know, maybe it has to come from us.

Even if the incentives aren't aligned, maybe we have to be part of the change we want to see in the world and say, "Hey, actively engage regulators to say

there is another way even if that's short-term pain for us." It we've always taken a long view, right? Be long-term

greedy and say this is better for the industry. Otherwise, everyone's going to

industry. Otherwise, everyone's going to be hurting for, you know, a number of more years and how long can this current model sustain itself? So we're trying to be part of the change as well and we can

talk about like how we're doing that in terms of our internal plans and processes as well.

Let's talk about gsr and try to understand what it is first.

Explain gsr to your mom.

I've tried. It's hard. [laughter]

Let's try [snorts] let's try again.

Yeah. I've tried to my son as well who's a 5-year-old. Sometimes people say

a 5-year-old. Sometimes people say explain it to me like I'm five. Right.

So I've tried that too. I'll try

something different to what other people have tried to do which is generally in a financial context. Right? If we take it

financial context. Right? If we take it out of a financial context and just talk about a different kind of two-sided marketplace. Let's talk about taxis and

marketplace. Let's talk about taxis and ride hailing because everyone's ridden a cab, right? I I rode a cab here. Well, I

cab, right? I I rode a cab here. Well, I

tried but it got cancelled. So I ended up getting a normal taxi and then walking half the way. Um, so clearly something is broken about this market structure as well here. But if when it works well,

that's what keeps you young.

Yeah.

Getting my steps stairs, right? [laughter]

right? [laughter] Walking up the hill. Yeah. Um,

so when it works well, what should happen? You know, everyone's been in an

happen? You know, everyone's been in an Uber. My son's been been in a grab in

Uber. My son's been been in a grab in Singapore. You people hear hail DDS,

Singapore. You people hear hail DDS, right? And people understand how that

right? And people understand how that works as a two-sided marketplace. It's

just supply and demand for a particular asset. In this term, in in this

asset. In this term, in in this particular instance, it's rides, right?

That's no different to trading and what a market maker does. So, when Uber goes into a new market, what does it do? It

pays drivers to sit there with the app open doing nothing and waiting for the demand side to come.

Right? So, supply of rides and demand of rides. Why do they do that? because they

rides. Why do they do that? because they

have to ensure good user experience for the people that want to take the rides.

[snorts] They have to make sure you when you call something it's going to be there within 5 minutes, right?

Otherwise, people will cancel. So,

optimize the user experience when the market is nent and you've got to bootstrap it from 0 to one. That's

that's what they do.

We're exactly the same. In this case, Uber is the exchange, right?

The exchange may compensate a market maker. In this case, we're the drivers,

maker. In this case, we're the drivers, if you like. Right? We put resting orders in the market to make sure that when someone comes with demand to take the liquidity, they get a good experience. They get a good price.

experience. They get a good price.

[snorts] They can execute a big order without too much slippage, right, from the market. They

can do it 24/7 anytime, right? I can

wake up in the middle of the night and call a taxi and I can still get one because someone's being incentivized to be there waiting for me.

That's how I best like to describe what market makers do to people that don't understand even sort of financial markets necessarily, but just another

kind of two-sided marketplace, right?

Does that make any sense to you whatsoever?

That's pretty good.

Okay.

Who is the passenger?

Who's the passenger? The passenger is the the taker, right? So, it could be retail, it could be another institution coming,

right? Um, you know, we think of the the

right? Um, you know, we think of the the market maker as a it's it's a transportation firm, right? So Uber has

individual drivers and anyone can put limit orders in the market, right? You

can go in and do it on your own personal account. But Uber also has professional

account. But Uber also has professional firms working on the platform, right?

With fleets or taxis. Think of trading firms like that. Professional

with KPIs, right? You got to be here.

You get compensated to meet these KPIs, spreads depths uptime.

That's all we do, right? [snorts] And

you create a good experience for the other side, whoever wants to come and take the liquidity from the market, regardless of how big it is, right?

Retail might be, you know, a small fourperson car. You got a big

fourperson car. You got a big institution coming and say, I want a a van that carries 13 people. I got a big order, right? I I still want a good

order, right? I I still want a good experience. You need different types of,

experience. You need different types of, you know, orders in the market to satisfy the demand side.

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There's a market maker reputation problem today. You always need a

problem today. You always need a scapegoat. Usually it's Binance

scapegoat. Usually it's Binance or market makers.

You're less of a scapegoat than uh [laughter] some other market makers out there. We're on this podcast.

there. We're on this podcast.

Yeah. [laughter]

Why do market makers in crypto have a bad reputation?

It comes back to some of the things we talked about before, right? It's uh it's an underregulated market. Mhm.

There's not enough people out there that want to do things the right way. They

want to optimize for short-term gains.

They're transactional, right? They

make money and the consequences are limited and they leave the market and uh there isn't enough enforcement. So

although we welcome the right level of enforcement and regulation right that there has been in the past sometimes over you

know over enforcement as well and we have to find the right right balance like under the the previous administration the SEC right it was against everybody I think not me

personally but our founder testified in the Ripple case you know we were found to have had no you know unsafe every role in any of the

the distribution of supposedly unrested securities, but it's real, right? So,

everyone gets tred with the same brush because just because it's possible to do something bad doesn't mean that everyone in the industry is a bad actor. Crypto

in general, right, that has that problem. So, you know, [snorts] for

problem. So, you know, [snorts] for years everyone would say, "Ah, crypto is just for crooks and money launderers and you know, is it not

[laughter and gasps] and you know the black market, right?

And drugs and whatever.

Yeah, of course that existed. All of

that existed, right? But doesn't mean everyone that played in the market was a bad actor. There there are nice people

bad actor. There there are nice people that can do well.

There are good people that trying to build the industry. Yeah. So, um I think that's changing over time, right? The

the bad actors self- select out of the market. We've seen people put away

market. We've seen people put away rightly so in prison for it. We've seen

people be blocked from exchanges, right? You you

mentioned Binance. They've done some good things in terms of creating a level playing field as well over time, right?

With cases like, you know, web 3 last year being kicked out of the platform.

We we welcome that. It's starting to happen for real now. There's more

surveillance happening. There's

positive moves in the right direction, but we're not there yet.

How do we fix the crypto market makers reputation?

Change the structure, right? We talked

about it. Why does,

you know, Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan not have a reputational problem? Well, a

[snorts] they've been doing it for years like us and generally they've been doing the right thing, right? Because actually

you can do well and do good at the same time. These are not mutually exclusive

time. These are not mutually exclusive things, right? I I think was

things, right? I I think was taught that growing up as well, right?

Going back to who am I as a person.

You know what what my parents tried to do and what you know you can have biodegradable green materials that are replacement for foam packaging that creates white pollution in the seas.

Hey, you're you're doing good. Hey, you

can make money doing that. There's not a problem with that. And so

we have generally a good reputation as you see and you go on crypto Twitter and not that many people [ __ ] about us and what we do pretty clean. We've tried to do the right thing over many many years.

But that has to come together with a structure and regulation that removes potential conflicts of interest and I think that's what happens with

underwriters for IPOs. I think that's the direction the market might move in where we want to take the position as the

premier top tier lead left underwriters.

That's that's a term commonly used for whoever leads the underwriting syndicate, right, in an IPO because we earn reputation because people know that

we can meet our obligations because the regulations prevent conflicts of interest and we've built up over many years and decades a network of clients

that trust us to do that and would just be the first name in people's minds when they want to list a token.

they'll think of us. That's the

positioning we want to talk about.

That's quite different from other so-called market makers, right? Because

most market makers come from a propriety trading background. They come from a

trading background. They come from a different DNA. If you look at most

different DNA. If you look at most people at GSR, they've come from a client service background from some shape or form, right? either

investment bank sort of sales and trading side of things serving corporates, you know, for [clears throat] Fortune 500 companies that want to do hedging or treasury management or people

from the asset management side like my background. You're a fiduciary to your

background. You're a fiduciary to your clients, big sovereigns, pension funds, university endowments, right? We know

these are the people we serve. We're

trying to do right by them. It's a

different background to a pure prop trading mentality where it is about leaderboards and money and and P&L and

competing against not just external people but internally other pods and and desks for who can make the most money at any given time, right? And the

compensation structure is geared towards that. We're we're a little different.

that. We're we're a little different.

We're not a neat what you kill kind of place. for a different type of culture

place. for a different type of culture that's more collaborative, more collegiate. We pay that way. We try and

collegiate. We pay that way. We try and encourage people to work together.

M um so I think that's how we solve part of the problem of reputation over time.

You mentioned Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, GSR aims to become the Goldman Sachs of crypto, the investment bank for web 3.

What does that mean exactly?

When you think about what we just talked about in terms of where the market structure for bringing new issuments is broken, I think we can be part of the

solution to that, right? So, how do you [snorts] do that? You create a business that holds the hand of any token issuer

regardless of the underlying asset. And we [clears throat] can talk

asset. And we [clears throat] can talk about that later. tokenization is a is a big theme. We we're looking at that

big theme. We we're looking at that space but not just utility tokens for protocols whether that's you know infra application level but other types of

assets later on. You hold their hand from inception to maturity from the primary markets through to secondary market liquidity through to maturity and

you offer everything they need in that life cycle. Right? That's how you gain

life cycle. Right? That's how you gain the trust, gain the alignment, get better reputation. So that means for us

better reputation. So that means for us three main business lines. It's an

advisory business before companies become listed and liquidly traded, a [snorts] market business once they get listed. And we we trade that on

listed. And we we trade that on centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, over the counter, stream [snorts] that liquidity to wants to consume it. And that's changing over

consume it. And that's changing over time. who you know who is the the

time. who you know who is the the counterparty that we face and then finally as they become you know multi-billion dollar balance sheet

foundations in their own right help them manage that create yield and help them fund their future expenses right so

three businesses in a trady world you'd say that's a universal investment bank I was about to ask give me an example of what the Goldman Sachs would be doing when they work with a company like

Coca-Cola so people understand ah this is done that way Coca-Cola working with Goldman Sachs what's happening there that you're trying to replicate in the web three world

yeah yeah so Coca-Cola or maybe something a bit more relatable like a web 2 tech company right that's more more recent that people can remember

like I grew up in in the sort of web 2.0 know world and you know social media and on before even like mobile internet but on desktops and things like that and

Facebook right Facebook would come to market Goldman would invest in their preIPO round right substantial capital off their own

balance sheet on the VC side of things [snorts] bring them to market underwrite their IPO as they become mature Facebook itself and their CFO office and their treasury needs

asset management, right? Their employees

and their executives need private wealth management.

Goldman would probably do all of that.

I don't know if that's true in this specific case, but you get the idea, right? That

right? That that's what investment banks do.

And that's what we are already starting to do for our clients. It's just web 3. It's it's

our clients. It's just web 3. It's it's

even more complex. They have to think about capital markets much earlier than web two companies because they have to think about tokconomics and they have to think about where they set up their

legal entity and they have to think about exchange listing strategy in what sequence. That's a lot of stuff to worry

sequence. That's a lot of stuff to worry about. We can hold their hand and be

about. We can hold their hand and be their adviser. We can also independently

their adviser. We can also independently put a a ticket in as maybe the first institution on their cap table, separate part of the business, right?

Information barriers and no conflict of interest, no paytoplay, but then they become, you know, a trusted partner of ours and and vice versa. And we take them through the rest of whatever they

need to do in that capital market. So

that's that's what we're doing. We have

some gaps in our capabilities. We're

trying to fill them either by buying companies that we think are already great at what they do or building that capability ourself.

But that's the goal under one roof, one-stop shop.

come at the first instance that you're thinking of building a web company and trust us to provide you the the network,

the resources, the connectivity to do all of that through a multi-year cycle, right? It's not transactional one and

right? It's not transactional one and done short-term deals. Why is it so necessary

short-term deals. Why is it so necessary for GSR to think bigger instead of just making more market making deals?

think bigger and become the Goldman Sachs of web three. Why now?

Few reasons. I think [snorts] we talked about the market being broken, right? So, if we don't contribute to the

right? So, if we don't contribute to the solution, I think we'll just see a gradual decline in the demand for our services quite

frankly, right? Because there's a

frankly, right? Because there's a structural underlying problem there.

Number two, there is real margin compression here, right? So, we used to to do this, you know, we were one of the OGs that started doing this many many years ago, but people have come in to

compete with us directly or to be upstream of us and perform some of the services that we used to do as part of

the package for earning our fee on a deal. Right? So if we got 1 to 2% of

deal. Right? So if we got 1 to 2% of total supply for example, people would come in and say, "Hey, I'll do tokconomics for you. I'll do exchange

listing strategy for you. I'll take 10 bits, 20 bips, right?" They'll come and start to compress the amount we can charge.

They're good companies mostly. Some of

them are bad as well. We talked about it, right? Not everyone is bad, but

it, right? Not everyone is bad, but there are scammers out there. Some of

them are good and they start to disintermediate us and start to remove the relationship that we have with the end client. So we'd rather

do it all and earn our right to be the primary market maker to be the lead underwriter and say we'll do it all. We

can charge explicitly for it or we'll just build a relationship with you earlier and then trust that you will naturally choose us

downstream. right for market making for

downstream. right for market making for OTC for asset management [snorts] and it becomes more like almost like a a SAS business right it's like a tech company

where you have cost of customer acquisition and you have customer lifetime value over time and we think the lifetime values is huge because we build a lot of trust and relationship

with that company we don't need to explicitly ask them to [snorts] use us for XYZ service but because we're valuable to them from day they're just going to work with us

anyway. That becomes much more

anyway. That becomes much more diversified, much more predictable, much more stable. So that's the third reason,

more stable. So that's the third reason, right? It's it's good business. If we

right? It's it's good business. If we

can do that and be less, you know, sensitive to the cycles, then that makes us a more attractive company for ourselves, maybe to

be a publicly listed company one day or to attract institutional investment.

We've we've never taken a penny of outside money to this day, right?

bootstrapped with 20k [snorts] of the founders money, you know, 12 years ago. I think over that time, the growth in the book value

of the company is outpaced Bitcoin. And

uh we've done great, but what's next, right? Like we got to also start to

right? Like we got to also start to compete. So that's the reason like

compete. So that's the reason like because now is a time when crypto and traffic is converging so quickly that we got to have some some more

firepower, some more you know capital to go and invest in acquiring businesses that help us get there or get licenses and have

regulatory capital because now crypto is finally ready for prime time. It's taken

a long time to get there but that's that's a big reason for doing it now.

You mentioned uh acquisitions. You've

made two major acquisitions.

Why?

Well, they actually come together. So, I

guess they count as one.

Another deal we're looking at is an investment, minority investment, not an acquisition, on a majority, you know, stake in that

company. So, really the acquisition is

company. So, really the acquisition is one deal, but it's two companies. M

and it's in the advisory space. So I

talked about you know advisory and my markets business and asset management right it's a buy or build decision for us can we do it ourselves yeah is it going to take a long time maybe is it

better to go and acquire something in this case yes it was why because these two companies who are called autonomous and architect

they they're the best in the business right we think we're the best in our is, yeah, we're, you know, um, we want to work with people who are culturally

aligned with us and already leaders.

Plus, we've had a multi-year commercial relationship with these guys anyway.

They refer business our way. Why not be part of the same family?

So, what do they do? Autonomous helps at the very start of the journey for a token issuer. So you set up a legal

token issuer. So you set up a legal entity to have your labs business that does all the dev work and then you set up a token issuing entity typically a

foundation right it could be in Cayman could be Switzerland could be Singapore US [snorts] is trying to attract more these foundations back on shore that might happen these guys are agnostic but they help with these things basically

setting up the foundation appointing directors getting you set up in the right structure to start developing architect does something different. They

do advisory work primarily on tokconomics [snorts] and exchange listings, sometimes market maker selection and asset management, right?

How you you do the the stuff later down the funnel. Tokconomics sometimes

the funnel. Tokconomics sometimes happens even before people set up the entity. So it's not always clear which

entity. So it's not always clear which is the first touch point but either way architect and autonomous common team common shareholders they're

excellent they have the relationships with some of the biggest foundations in our space and they like us are also from a service

background right they're people that have been in financial services in uh big four accounting firms they have the right values they want to build this for

the long term they think the combination of these companies is much more powerful than us stand alone doing our own thing right I think there's a lot of consolidation happening in the market

whether that's exchanges you know buying each other or custodians going you know up the value chain or or down the value chain it's the same thing for us right

we think these are a great team and uh we're very happy that they're part of the GS family Now, quick one. I want to thank our partners

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You mentioned a minority investment and you talked about tokenization before.

Can you tell us more about this and why now is the right moment to focus on tokenization?

Yeah, [snorts and clears throat] uh super excited about this. Personally, I

think uh there's a lot of misconception about tokenization. Firstly, right,

about tokenization. Firstly, right, there's people talk about it. It's flavor of the month.

It's It's everywhere. But the market hasn't really developed yet. There's a

lot of people that are supplying assets, right? Whether

that's, you know, tokenized private credit funds or tokenized um, you know, equities, but the demand side hasn't really come

yet, right? So again, back to the Uber

yet, right? So again, back to the Uber analogy, where's the other side of the market? Let's not build stuff that is

market? Let's not build stuff that is just, you know, a solution looking for a problem. Let's

build something that's actually genuinely useful for people. That hasn't

happened yet, but we think it's going to happen in the next few years. We just

got to find the demand side and help with the distribution and say who is going to invest in these kinds of assets, right?

So we'll come back to that. But before

talking about that, it's it should be a big opportunity, right? We started

earlier about, you know, what did I learn from my fuckups on, you know, starting my own businesses and being a startup guy. Um, one of the first things

startup guy. Um, one of the first things was learning that the market's got to be big enough.

This is a [ __ ] huge market, right?

How how huge is it? [sighs]

Nobody knows right now, but the best estimate is if you think about crypto currently market cap being 3 trillion give or take. Okay, it's taken a beating recently. Maybe it's like 2.5 now, but

recently. Maybe it's like 2.5 now, but that level, right? Think about the securities market as a whole. So,

equities, debt, um you know, trade financing, whatever other things all together, that's a $300 trillion market. So if the

estimates are even 5 to 10% of that comes on chain in the next few years, right? I think that's what the the

right? I think that's what the the consultancies are saying, then that's 15 to 30 trillion dollars, right? That's

10x what the market cap of crypto is today. So that that's big enough, right?

today. So that that's big enough, right?

When I was doing options, I was a smaller market. You had to be, you know,

smaller market. You had to be, you know, dominant market share. you'd have to be, you know, very leading to make a sustainable business out of that. But

this is a big enough pie that we think we've got to bet on it. And

the other reason is because we need programmable assets, right? I think we talked about this earlier as well. So if

[snorts] you know AI is really going to take off, we're going to have AI agents that need to earn their own living that need economics for themselves to make them self

sustainable. Then they need to have

sustainable. Then they need to have stable coins for payments, right? That

are programmable that can have a if this then that logic applied to them. They

don't understand fiat currencies.

Then they also need assets to be able to invest in, right? They need to generate yield. So you've got stable coins,

yield. So you've got stable coins, you've got tokenized money market funds.

then you start moving up the risk spectrum to other things that's going to generate some yield for them. So that's

kind of the bet that we're making in the long run if that makes sense. And then

happy to talk more about how we're going to try and find the other side as well cuz that's not easy, right?

What what needs to happen for this 10% of 300 trillion securities market to be on chain by 2030 which is just four years away.

Yeah, it's not a long time. Um, like any two-sided market, you got to find the other side, right? There's a lot of supply. Why? There's people that want to

supply. Why? There's people that want to tokenize whatever they have, real estate that is illquid and they can't actually find buyers. So, you don't want to just

find buyers. So, you don't want to just sell a shitty asset to someone, right, and left leave someone else holding the bag. We've learned from, you know, the

bag. We've learned from, you know, the last 10 years in in crypto that that's not sustainable. there has to be real

not sustainable. there has to be real demand for whatever you're trying to sell. What is that going to be? Right?

sell. What is that going to be? Right?

So, in our view, you know, the obvious starting point for us at least is helping the foundations to diversify their holdings because we have the relationship with the foundations. As I

said, you know, we're full service capital markets partner. They trust us.

They've got multi-year relationships with us. Often, they just hold their own

with us. Often, they just hold their own token, XYZ token, right? What what can they do with that? they can sell some calls on it. And by [snorts] the way, that's another way of, you know, putting pressure on the market because everyone

just sells vault. No one's buying options in volatility, right? You got to make that market appear as well.

Separate topic, but that's all they can do. They can sell options to generate

do. They can sell options to generate some yield. They should diversify,

some yield. They should diversify, right? They often, you know, call us and

right? They often, you know, call us and back in the day when it was first-time founders managing their own treasury without professional CFOs, they would just not really understand risk

management. They'd say, "Then's going to

management. They'd say, "Then's going to the moon. It's fine. Everything is is

the moon. It's fine. Everything is is fine. We don't need to diversify." Now,

fine. We don't need to diversify." Now,

the the sophistication is there. There

are people that understand how to manage their own treasuries and they know they need to diversify if they have a a return target of we need to make 6 to 7%

a year to fund our future growth because we have all these development projects in our pipeline. We got to give grants out to you know get developers building in our ecosystem. Then we have to hit

this target. Well, just sitting on you

this target. Well, just sitting on you know money market funds is not enough to do that. they're going to have to

do that. they're going to have to diversify a bit further, right? Do they

start to buy listed debt? Do they start to buy, you know, private credit? Do

they start to buy other types of assets that gets them to that target? We think

that's probably the most obvious starting point. We've started it with

starting point. We've started it with money market funds cuz that solves a problem for ourselves and it and it's the most basic sort of underlying asset

that people want to trade. quite

regularly, but [snorts] we're trying to find other things that look a bit like this and create a secondary market for it.

You mentioned before advisory, you actually have a case study on that that you built with Polygon.

Oh, yeah.

Katana.

Yes.

Explain to me Katana simply.

Yeah. Um,

I don't think I'm going to be able to explain this like I explained it to my mom. This one's harder. I don't have an

mom. This one's harder. I don't have an Uber analogy for this one cuz what they're doing is pretty cool. And um,

my mom doesn't understand stuff.

[laughter] Yeah, my mom is not cool.

Yeah. So,

don't [snorts] tell her.

Uh, Katana. Yeah, it's a great example of where we've tried to be that full service partner to somebody. Right. So,

this was incubation co-creation with Polygon. What is it? It's a DeFi first

Polygon. What is it? It's a DeFi first layer 2 EVM compatible.

What problem is it trying to solve?

Again, I'll go back to we're trying to create some value here, right? Not just

build something that that people aren't going to use. Two problems. One, liquidity fragmentation. So, you go onto

liquidity fragmentation. So, you go onto any chain and usually there are, you know, tons of primitives doing the same thing, right?

So you'd have, you know, five or 10 spot AMM dexes. [snorts]

AMM dexes. [snorts] You'd have, you know, couple of per dexes. You'd have another bunch of

dexes. You'd have another bunch of borrow lending protocols, asset management protocols, etc., etc.

And it fragments liquidity.

People just go chasing whatever yield is best, you know, in a given place. And

that's the second problem. Right? When

you have fragmented liquidity and when it's a speculative market, what do people do? Well, they just optimize for

people do? Well, they just optimize for who's given me the most dollars in my pocket, that's dangerous because how sustainable is that? We've seen many

many times whether that's, you know, Terra Luna or um that it doesn't always work, right? You can't just go chasing

work, right? You can't just go chasing unsustainable yield that's been given by the issuer to get some attention short term. You got to have sustainable yield.

term. You got to have sustainable yield.

So that's the second thing that it solves. How does it solve it? It takes

solves. How does it solve it? It takes

the the chain revenue. It takes the application revenue and it takes like sequencing fees and the borrow lending market. So you know Moro is one of the

market. So you know Moro is one of the the core apps and the borrow lending yield on that. It aggregates it all together and it gives people then a more sustainable

balanced diversified yield, right? And

that's not just going to [snorts] you know move up and down based on you know temporary incentives that people are offering that's going to be long-term sustainable. So it's solving those two

sustainable. So it's solving those two things and we helped with the whole cycle right from tokconomics to you know technical integration to finding the other market makers right we're the

primary market maker but there's plenty of other people out there that have idle assets that can be bridged on katana and using those idle assets to generate yield for them that we don't sit on

natively so we brought in under market makers to do that [snorts] um help with tbl you know bootstrapping to get it going.

The whole service it was was great learning experience. What we learned

learning experience. What we learned from that is this is awesome. We like

this model have a smaller amount of bigger partnerships and bigger clients, people building real use cases, right?

We don't need hundreds and hundreds of clients. We just need a few impactful

clients. We just need a few impactful ones.

But it's a [ __ ] ton of work, right? And

we don't have the internal resources to do all this. That's why we went to make the acquisition as well cuz there's a bunch of people out there doing it longer better more structured

than we can. So why not learn from them, right? We don't know everything.

right? We don't know everything.

What does doing things the right way mean to you?

Doing things the right way, it means that's tough. I I think about it maybe

that's tough. I I think about it maybe in a couple of ways.

One is like if it's printed on the front cover of Wall Street Journal or Financial Times or South China Morning Post. We're in Hong Kong, right? How

Post. We're in Hong Kong, right? How

would you feel about it? If you don't like that feeling, don't do it cuz that's real, right? That's that's how you should live. You should treat others

how you want to be treated. You should

live, you know, a life that that you would be proud of. you could look back and tell your kids about and your grandkids and and your story and not feel ashamed of that about that. I

talked about being a family man. I

believe that. So, I guess that's the second piece. The second piece is like

second piece. The second piece is like treating other people like you would want to be treated yourself and I felt that didn't always happen to me growing

up because I'm kind of like a third culture kid, right? I I told you the story of moving from China to to the UK age five. I didn't speak a word of

age five. I didn't speak a word of English at that point. I I was a kid.

You pick it up quickly. So that's nice.

But at that time it was hard and uh you know bullying fitting in. I always felt like an outsider.

And so that's helpful actually, right?

Because as an outsider you always think well how would I want to be treated by other people?

I can then be more empathetic to others.

I try to see the best in other people.

And we take that approach with our clients as well, I think. Right. Cuz it's not just [snorts]

think. Right. Cuz it's not just [snorts] here's a deal, take it or leave it. You

know it's I want to help you. Right? That's the

first mindset. It's like we listen to our clients problems. What are their pain points? We've got two ears and one

pain points? We've got two ears and one mouth for a reason. So, we start by listening and then then we talk about what we can help them with. And that's

different to a lot of market makers, right? Who are just there

right? Who are just there here's the deal, here's the structure, take it or leave it. And we're trying to be a bit more consultative in our approach to things. And so, that's

that's I think where it comes from like doing the right thing. Um, our founders have instilled this as well. Well, I

talked about their background professionally, but personally there's, you know, there's a sort of family like culture at the company as well, which is

hard to maintain as you grow, but I think we've done it reasonably well. We

come together [snorts] every year for an offsite. We bring people together.

offsite. We bring people together.

People are much nicer face to face than over a Slack or or a Telegram where people, you know, throw stones at each other and [ __ ] on each other. Get rid of

that. And and I think that that then

that. And and I think that that then drives like what we do externally as well.

When is job done for?

[snorts] Never, man. I'm a workaholic. [laughter]

Never, man. I'm a workaholic. [laughter]

I told you work ethic and uh grinding is something that was brought up with. But

um I mean jokes aside um [snorts]

I I it's not about money I guess right it's not it's not about how much money that I've earned because for me money is

kind of it's just a means for exchange and buying something else and and for me that something else that's

valuable is freedom. You know, freedom can take many forms, right? I think

freedom can be, you know, financial freedom. I

think, you know, for for that it means security and the ability to protect your family and your loved ones.

you know, if war breaks out and you you got to put them, you know, in a bunker somewhere and uh protect them, how do you do that? Do you have the freedom to

do that? Do you have that optionality?

do that? Do you have that optionality?

Then money can can get that for you. Um,

I think that it's not about competing with other people for me, right? It's not about leaderboards and

right? It's not about leaderboards and how we're doing against other people. It

never has. It's it's been about competing with myself. That's when I'm done. Like how what is the personal best

done. Like how what is the personal best that I want to achieve? If I achieve that, if we achieve that collectively as a company, then we can be satisfied, then then we can be done. So, I've

always liked um like individual sports and we we talked about personal training, right? It's kind of like that.

training, right? It's kind of like that.

Personal training, you know, you set yourself a goal, you want to get your weight down, you want to increase your your muscle mass, you want to lift 50% more or you hit that target, boom, you

know, you can feel satisfied that you're doing something good for yourself and and you've reached that goal. For me,

it's not about competing with others, especially in a market that is still quite new and like we talked about, right? Like we don't need to fight for

right? Like we don't need to fight for market share. We just need to grow the

market share. We just need to grow the pie together. Exchanges, market makers,

pie together. Exchanges, market makers, issuers, let's get aligned and let's do the right thing and everything will be better collectively.

Um, so that is how I measure myself. I

think that's how the company measures itself. So if we go back to last year

itself. So if we go back to last year and all the craziness that happened, right? The external environment,

right? The external environment, we can't control, right? It was it was tough. The second half of the year was

tough. The second half of the year was tough, not going to lie. But did we achieve our internally set goals? Yeah.

Because one year ago, we said we think the market is going to change. We think

we need to diversify from being a pure market maker to something way more than that upstream and downstream. We drew a little diagram right amongst the team.

you know, different people contributed to that. It's not just me. In fact, the

to that. It's not just me. In fact, the idea didn't come from me at all. It came

from, you know, someone else in the team. Good ideas can come from anywhere.

team. Good ideas can come from anywhere.

But we iterated on that and we said, "Hey, we think we need to be a business that has an advisory markets business and asset management business. One year

ago, we didn't have an advisory business. We didn't have an asset

business. We didn't have an asset management business. Today [snorts]

management business. Today [snorts] we've acquired an advisory business and we've built out an asset management business through our activities early on in the digital asset treasury space. So

sometimes it's build, sometimes it's buy, but we got there.

That's [ __ ] cool, right? That's like

setting ourselves a you know personal training target of getting your your personal best.

That's that's good enough for me. And

so, you know, um I think I've heard people talk about like games on some of your uh previous, you know, podcasts as well. I I like to play games, too. And talking about, you

know, protecting your family in in case of a a a nuclear disaster or war. Um I

don't know if you've watched Fallout.

I'm I'm a bit of a Fallout geek. It's a

it's a game that they turned into an Amazon show. Have you seen it?

Amazon show. Have you seen it?

No. Okay. Basically, it's it's about if war breaks out, everyone lives in in underground vaults. But the point of

underground vaults. But the point of telling this is is to say like I like to play games, but the game is the games I like to play are single player games as well, right? It's not like a competitive

well, right? It's not like a competitive game. And it's a single player game.

game. And it's a single player game.

It's a role playing game. You're kind of constantly trying to improve yourself, [snorts] upskill, have better trades.

You you trade, you barter with money to get more resources and then you complete quests and you

become the hero and you become the the main character in your own story. For

me, that's good enough, right? Just live

life as the main character in your story. And

story. And like we said at the beginning, my parents gave me the the platform, stability to to do that, to try and take some risks, not, you know, rest on my laurels and

just clip a coupon and try to, you know, work in a big company, have a stable job. I I tried that. I think it's a

job. I I tried that. I think it's a great experience at at Black Rockck.

Learned what good looks like, right?

Learned what what big companies do well, but then you apply that and you try and create your own story and journey. and and that that's been hard, but it's been super rewarding

as well. It's a long answer, but that

as well. It's a long answer, but that for me is what I want to do and when I will be done is when I achieve some of the goals that we've set for the company, but for me

personally as well in terms of looking out for my family. [snorts] Thank you so much. Thank you so much for doing this.

much. Thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you for showing that there is some nice guys in Spotify [laughter] and some nice guys in crypto and some nice guys in the market making industry uh space.

Thank you Kevin. I appreciate it. It's

been really enjoyable and I like learning from the best. So uh yeah hopefully you'll have me on again another time.

With great pleasure. Thank you.

Thank you.

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