[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the Crypto Maverick's podcast and we have a great guest here for you today.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're joined by Gerald David he goes by JD and he's the CEO of links.
[SPEAKER_00]: A real-time settlement network built to help institutions move cladrally, instantly, reduce settlement friction and keep capital working in the digital asset market JD.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really excited to have you on today.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's great to be here Brian.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a great thing to talk all things crypto and you know, we'd love to know a little bit about how you got involved with links, but more specifically in the crypto space.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, wow, it's a trip down memory lane.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hadn't thought about that in a little while.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I got involved in the space.
[SPEAKER_02]: My background's been into derivatives and infrastructure, actually.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the first projects that I worked on was an ICO to create an exchange here in the US.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was circa 2017.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we raised $47 million to create essentially side by side exchanges at DCM in the US under the USCFDC.
[SPEAKER_02]: One that would actually trade digital assets and the other that could trade traditional commodities.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the thesis there on the thought was that if let's say you've got sideways markets in Bitcoin, you can put your Bitcoin off, use this collateral, and then trade, let's say oil, which happens to be hopping specifically, as of late.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was like first Scott involved in this space, and then ultimately I found my way to a company called ARCA, which is a asset manager, on the west coast of the US.
[SPEAKER_02]: And ARCA is most known for the private fun complex that they actually
[SPEAKER_02]: But the work that I did there is President really was focused more on creating regulatory products.
[SPEAKER_02]: So think about, you know, open and fun, close down interval funds, you know, 40 act products.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then figure out how it is that one could take, you know, a wrapper around them and then ultimately create a delivery mechanism on a public blockchain.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we began working on the first 40 act fund that issued it shares as digital asset security as back Marka, and we started doing that in 2017 and 2018.
[SPEAKER_02]: It took us a couple of years, but we finally went affected with the first 40 act fund that issued it shares as digital asset securities.
[SPEAKER_02]: We call that the ARCA US Treasury Fund.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to affect it with that formula to buy this six of 2020.
[SPEAKER_02]: So really early when you think about the tokenization movement, really early when you think about part of the ways because it wasn't until really 2023 and 2023, 2023.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you started seeing folks like Wisdom Tree, or Franklin Templeton or BlackRock showing up with very similar problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell us a little bit about links.
[SPEAKER_00]: What problem are you trying to solve in crypto and additionally traditional finance?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so Link really is a product that you said before it's a real-time settlement system.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, the problem we're trying to solve here really is the gap between the way that traditional banking works and the needs of the digital asset market.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you think back to the evolution of the space, obviously, you know, stable tokens were created in order to upfuscate banks in order for us to, you know, be able to take
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, dollar-denominated assets and move them around rapidly as rapidly as the digital asset industry does.
[SPEAKER_02]: So think about a simple, you know, over-the-counter transaction, one sentence stable, cooking very fast, but then, you know, the digital asset then follows, you know, using traditional rails for that would be, you know, very, very problematic because the dollar should be following or of the euros or whatever asset you would have or whatever it hurts and on the nation or your currency is.
[SPEAKER_02]: would be following in like T plus one or T plus two and then the risk in this space is just too great when one leg of the transaction living so fast.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, Danny Baxter around the same time I was working on the first treasury fund.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was there were series of different banks in the US that had created settlement networks.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure a lot of your viewers would be familiar with both signature banks signet, as well as Silver Gates send.
[SPEAKER_02]: And these are the first explorations here in the US of tokenized deposit networks.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they came in quite handy, right, because they satisfied and need in the market.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that need was the ability for a large number of market participants to come together.
[SPEAKER_02]: It, uh, fairly, you know, kind of safe environment, um, turns out that the end of the story is that the banks were shut down.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess those weren't so safe at the time, at the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but that this is there as you can create a network of trusted counterparts.
[SPEAKER_02]: That could then send, in that case, tokenized deposits back and forth between users, in order to satisfy things like trades, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do I pay for my Bitcoin or my Solana?
[SPEAKER_02]: or my eat.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then other use cases evolve, like creating a reading stable tokens to allow for off-hours liquidity, and then other elements like taking funds and sending them to exchange in order to go ahead and facilitate collateral and exchange in order to trade.
[SPEAKER_02]: And those systems were great until they worked, and they were shut down by the federal government.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that will have to tremendous gap in a bullet in the marketplace, whereby users themselves are scrambling to find bank accounts, you know, even at ARGAP, you know, we were banking at signature bank and, you know, we lost our bank account as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And those inefficiencies in the market and those gaps actually introduced, you know, a tremendous amount of risk.
[SPEAKER_02]: And digital assets themselves, as you guys know, you know, maybe a little more complicated than simply, you know, a traditional wire.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, kind of the, you know, conflicts of all these users being debanked with having no access to real time rails for settlement opened up an opportunity for us to create link.
[SPEAKER_02]: And link essentially is a similar technology built by a company called TESA, that managed to birth 2.5 trillion dollars worth of transactions in the technology that they created.
[SPEAKER_02]: So really, you know, the core banking technology, mission critical, 247 operating, software and type 2 type of technologies.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the core, the backbone of what Lake really is, but instead of like a tokenized deposit, you know, the thought was that we could use a different asset to ride on those rails.
[SPEAKER_02]: One, that perhaps could be yield bearing or interest bearing.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'd find ourselves in a, you know, more individual position, offering enhancements to clients that were familiar with the technology, but wanted to, you know, capitalize on some of the trends in the space specifically
[SPEAKER_02]: The final piece Brian and Joe is that we took it outside the banking system and partnered with the company called T0 Securities.
[SPEAKER_02]: And T0 Securities was very, very early in the space.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're a broker dealer.
[SPEAKER_02]: They were awarded one of two different licenses to become a special purpose broker dealer in the US.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, we've kind of moved from, you know, traditional banking rails to a broker dealer facilitated system.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've moved from tokenized deposit to an asset that is generating interest for users and then we've taken the same tried and tested technology that our users are so familiar.
[SPEAKER_01]: You talked a lot about the appros, and there's definitely risk as well, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We see, you know, tether or stable coins, freezing some funds.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that a bit concerned in the space when this gets adopted by many players?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so, you know, I think that we created this in a way that tried to anticipate what the requirements would be, a lot of users, and also users that are forthcoming, like some of the large scale institutions in banks.
[SPEAKER_02]: So taking a step back, you know, I mentioned before that there are three different parties that weren't involved in this.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was Argun, there's, you know, T0 and Tassin.
[SPEAKER_02]: But very early on our exploration, we partnered with BTC2, Winner Meal, Galaxy, Falconix, Crypto.com, as well as fire blocks.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they are really the first users of the platform.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are also the ones who have helped to advise us on the structures we wanted to create.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are the ones who helped us realize the importance of things like rapid onboarding, a bankruptcy or mode structure at a trusted bank, which we have in the forum at the US Bank, and a bunch of the other requirements that are out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But those users also did more than that.
[SPEAKER_02]: They also started referring some of their most heavily trained with counterparts.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we very fast went from, you know, the five names that I mentioned before, to almost 40 different users right now that are on the platform.
[SPEAKER_02]: AOM, a TVL, I should say, of the platform, hit its peak of $90 million just a couple of weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'd like to think that, you know, what we've created really is something that allows for
[SPEAKER_02]: users that are either in the digital assets space, or the ones we anticipate to come in, to utilize really, not just for the transfer, but also really as a risk management tool, to mitigate some of the risks that are out there in this space.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Link focuses heavily on the yield bearing settlement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is the earning yield while assets are moving in such a big innovation and why people should
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, it is a big innovation and you know, I don't think that there's really enough attention given to, you know, kind of some of the projects that are out there specifically ours.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things I would say that we thought about early on and we were developing the product is, you know, what is the currency that's used by traditional finance.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you think about how assets are moving back and forth in traditional finance, you know, traditional finance really uses U.S. treasures as their currency.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was logical for us when we started thinking about why how it is that we could, you know, create an asset that ultimately will be delivering interest back to its users.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the other thing that I would say that was really interesting about, you know, the evolution of the business is that not only do we think that that was important, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it's satisfying, you know, the craze that the industry has on this huge RWA craze.
[SPEAKER_02]: But more importantly, you know, we had to think about how it is that we're delivering that back to the user, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the way that traditional finance works is that if you invest in, like, like an ETF or a money market fund that invest in U.S. treasuries, you know, you're receiving a yield payout at the end of that period of times at the end of the month.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it'll accrued daily, but it won't be paid out at one time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's that big game between a large scale for suspense as to who's actually holding the note, the bill, or the bond, at the end of that month in order for them to receive the interest generation payout.
[SPEAKER_02]: For us, we turned that bottle on its head.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we work with tacit and tacit actually create it for links specifically, a concept called yield and transit, yield and transit, it's a patent technology that allows for us to take the yield that's earned by each of the different holders of the shares and then deliver it to them down to the two second block.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you think about it, it's a proportional delivery or proportionate representation in the amount of time that you actually held it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a really, really cool invitation and allows for market makers that are, you know, training in and out of positions very, very frequently or sending funds to the exchange.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's actually got, you know, the percentage of interest that's been generated, then have it to the person in that same day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, Jar, I was going to ask.
[SPEAKER_01]: Blockchain makes things faster and safer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we see adoption come in fourth steam ahead.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you mentioned a little bit about county party risk and how does link help to avoid that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's, I look at this as big a risk management tool, frankly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's part of the discussions that I have, especially with the traditional financial firms that are getting into the space.
[SPEAKER_02]: risk is mitigated on linking a bunch of different ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: First of all, all users of the platform have to do AI and QP.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what does that really mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: They need to meet the standard whereby they have at least $25 million in capital.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is not a retail product.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's institutional only.
[SPEAKER_02]: The second thing that we do is we conduct an online KYC and all the users of the platform.
[SPEAKER_02]: So really, I mentioned earlier in the show that those previous implementations had a network of trusted counterparts, we're recreating that network, whereby you can transact with somebody and recognize that you're not going to find yourself dealing with a terrorist or someone that you're not supposed to be interacting with.
[SPEAKER_02]: The third thing is that the deployment for the platform is actually a private permission L1 of the avalanche, and that allows for us to have a contained environment whereby we know exactly who's on the platform, and we also know which assets are going back and forth.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the concern that one might have on a public blockchain regarding touching a stable token per se, that might have been tainted two or three or four years ago doesn't really exist on the platform.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the final thing I'll mention is that when we've structured this in a way, we're by we do have a patchwork of different licenses.
[SPEAKER_02]: The platforms operated by the broker dealer, who operates a special purpose broker dealer, as well as a carrying broker dealer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as I mentioned before, through some of the unique structure, and we've done plant funds are held in US Bank, plant funds are held in a bankruptcy remote structure, and in a segregated account.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, these are a few of the things that we thought about early on, but we wanted to create something that, you know, not only allowed for additional, you know, enhancements to systems that are previously operated, but would already, you know, from the first day, take the boxes if you were, you know, a black rock or a millennium or a large scale asset manager and do begin to transact in the digital asset space.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a long term vision mostly for crypto native institutions or is it going to be traditional finance firms or do you just see both of those pretty much becoming the exact same thing and it's a mix above.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I can answer the question like 10 ways, but the answer second quote is, yes, I do expect this to be a melding of both the industries, and in five or ten years time, there is not going to be a track by moniker associated with a turtleneck firm, or it's not going to be a crypto market maker.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be an integrated market maker across the space.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what I would say is the early explorations we've been having right now are in the digital asset space.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I mentioned we've got upwards of 40 different users already on there.
[SPEAKER_02]: The use case I mentioned from most of them are, you know, kind of settling individual transaction or bilateral movements between each other or collateralizing positions on exchanges.
[SPEAKER_02]: We also are about to bring on stable going to shore as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll be allowed for off-hours, liquidity on the platform.
[SPEAKER_02]: So now think about adding another protocol, which is like creating a beer stable token on there.
[SPEAKER_02]: and will be following suit with multiple different, you know, stable token issuers that allow for off-hours liquidity when the banks are closed in order for clients to send funds directly to the platform or also to be, you know, have a, uh, a single token created that can be used as an offer app.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, we've been quietly in the background exploring a bunch of other use cases that are out there and we're finding ourselves now in a place where I would actually be going live with one of them within the next couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_02]: In those use cases aren't, you know, just for digital assets, Brian, you know, the use cases that we're seeing are things like trade finance.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So a buyer, seller and a lender that ultimately, you know, have to, you know, finance, you know, a container that's got to go to say, we can use some of the functionality we've created like collateral lock.
[SPEAKER_02]: whereby, you know, some of them can send funds to the actual, I think, of this escrow account, the funds can be locked, the, you know, container window to see the bill of leading his issue, and then those funds are released from the collateral lock, and they actually go to the seller.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, that's another use case we're exploring.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're also, you know, markets phone 24-7, we're having some really interesting conversations with some of the exchange operators.
[SPEAKER_02]: on how it is that your traditional exchange operators, this is not like, you know, according to your sort of cracking, about how it is that we could use our tool to manage the flows of funds between, let's say, a client in an FCN, an FCN, and let's say, a clearing app.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there's another working on for cross-border, you know, payments and working south.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a whole bunch of different use cases now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like you said, I think we're starting to see the blurring of lines between, you know, digital asset or crypto use cases and others that exist in the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you said something to the market goes 24 seven and people like almost need to realize that more and more and we're seeing more.
[SPEAKER_00]: more of that happening and more adoption there, even with traditional finance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even before we jumped on, we were just chatting about some of our favorite sectors in crypto, and we were all over the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking things from like a little bit of AI to institutional interest to the latest news.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you could take the word crypto or just talking about crypto in a million different directions.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one hot narrative, I guess two hot narratives have been tokenized
[SPEAKER_00]: and real world assets.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like the buzz of all buzz and so they feel like especially the past year they've been some of the hardest things to talk about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is that sector suddenly getting so much interest in just exploding?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think there are a couple of answers there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can share what our experiences were while we gravitated to treasury.
[SPEAKER_02]: Treasury is initially in Korea in New York, U.S. Treasury, if I'm dating back to like I said, 2018.
[SPEAKER_02]: For us, we were looking for a low volatility instrument, one that had, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: the backing, right, rule of assets, and that case, it was, you know, Bill's Bonson Notes and Treasures, and, you know, for us, the interest bearing component wasn't the main driver at the time, but it proved to be critically important.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for us, it was how to demonstrate to a regulator, you know, that you're creating something that's not crypto.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was what we were trying to do back then.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, we feel the switch, I think people have been trying to figure out how it is they can get you, or can get interest on different assets, and I think that it's very easy for one to gravitate to understand what you're looking at in ETF, for example, or if you're looking at, you know, kind of a closed end, or an open end phone, for example.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's also helpful, I think that you're dealing with something like a brand name, like a black rock, or a
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a question, another thing top of mind for a lot of retail and I'm sure institutions also is privacy privacy networks.
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you balance compliance transparency with providing secure transaction permission confidentiality for institutions?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that was something that we went back to, you know, our initial users on, and the B2C2 intermediate Galaxy Falconets.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the long discussions, you know, with the heads of the trading basket and their senior executives, about how it is that, you know, we can, you know, both a, you know, provide the right amount of transparency, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But then also, really, you know, upfuscate, you know, some of the data that's going to be, you know, what they would consider to be a quarter-boat trade secrets.
[SPEAKER_02]: right nobody wants to know that you know you're sending you know fifty million dollars you know where you're buying fifty million dollars of you know whatever you know ask that you're buying on a public blockchain because you know your wallet address is well-known you know across the Twitter sphere and nobody wants that or that's not true purest one it but I would say that the financial institutions and the folks that are actually trying to transact using a public blockchain generally don't
[SPEAKER_02]: So that thesis was too full for us.
[SPEAKER_02]: The first was why don't we go ahead and create a deployment of a token on a public blockchain so that everybody could see exactly what was on the platform and they could balance that to make sure we solve for the transparency issue on the one to one back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyone who's been around in the space, I'm sure a lot of your viewers remember, you know, there were a lot of questions back in the day regarding, you know, what, you know, with stable tokens and there early early, you know, uh, uh, renditions, you know, the questions were, how do you know that there was a one to one back it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And we went through this whole process regarding, you know, audits, and first they were quarterly, then they were monthly, and then they were, you know, website access stations, and, you know, ultimately now we thought the best way to do it was real time transparency, be it what the blockchain was made for, um, which is that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, we do issue on the, on the, on the avalanche blockchain on Cchain, but to solve the other part of the problem, which was, you know, the data issue and the privacy issue, the belief was that if we created our own L1, like I said, we're working with avalanche, we have our own L1 that they'd develop for us and we could actually,
[SPEAKER_02]: send and receive and redeem.
[SPEAKER_02]: All through that, the net data itself will be contained within the environment.
[SPEAKER_02]: It will be public.
[SPEAKER_02]: The Procredular obviously, you know, kind of is managing the positions and holding the books and records, and they're also holding accounts for clients and show, you know, what assets it got and where.
[SPEAKER_02]: But for us, that was the most critical piece.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was to make sure that we could, you know, both satisfy, you know, the questions of the
[SPEAKER_02]: And then offer, you know, the industry, a solution that they believe they want, and they also believe that the, you know, traditional firms that are becoming into the space, you know, this year next year and in the future are going to want as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think the answer is yes here, but this is feel like crypto solely rebuilding the plumbing of the entire financial system.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm hearing you now say, you know, avalanche built your own L1 and just how the entire platform is built on crypto rails, just kind of curious about the overall market structure on macro trends you're seeing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, 100% this is like people boys said that blockchain is going to be disruptive to, you know, traditional finance, but it becomes more and more clear the deeper and deeper we get and the longer that, you know, kind of what was referred to really as an experiment comes on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, you know, and to understand that really, I think you've just got to, you know, take a deeper look at how Chad five was created, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: There were of course systems that were created on mean frame computers that both with that had different layers of solutions that were bolted on and bolted on and bolted on and then bubble gum and rubber banded.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now what you've got is the perfect opportunity for those systems to be rebuilt from the ground up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now it's probably unrealistic to believe that JPMorgan or Goldman's access is going to throw away what it works right now for them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know it's a quote of quote
[SPEAKER_02]: But there are other courses that can be rebuilt using blockchain technology for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to think that the infrastructure layer that we're creating is warm, but there are certainly many, many others that are out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I do think that you're going to start seeing at least if you're not internal, you know, deployments, which are already happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you're also going to start seeing things like bridge deco systems and you're start seeing, you know, different continued environments that allow for a permission way
[SPEAKER_01]: How are these larger institutions preparing if at all for the AI agent economy?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's top of mind for retail.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many people are building for that, but are our institutions?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, they absolutely are.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, when I think about what's public, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because there's also a ton of stuff that's out of them that's not public, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, a couple of examples of stuff that just not out of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we were working with one of the biggest banks in the world during, you know, 2021 through 2023, on how it is that they could use a tokenized version of a treasury from the RKUS treasury fund, the fund I mentioned before, internal.
[SPEAKER_02]: but the length you have to go through it to do that, where a massive, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So the first issue that to overcome, where things like how this bank was unable to custody a digital asset, rules weren't clear, they didn't have permission from their regulator, and we acted then spin up a pseudo-environment and replicate what it would look like in a contained environment, outside of the banks ecosystem, whereby they didn't touch a book and observe what those action look like.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's really hard, but that was 2022, 2022, fast forward three or four years, clear rules have now been set.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's go, funny institutions are involved in more than just POC's.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're building.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, if you look at JP Morgan for him alone,
[SPEAKER_02]: don't want me on the number, but like if I said they've got over 700 people there, I think that's probably, you know, plus or minus 10% standard deviation either way.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's probably correct.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's more than probably most of the firms in this space in the digital acid space alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I think there's a lot that's forthcoming, you know, I think that, you know, a lot of the signs when speaking at conferences, you know, earlier, you know, folks, yeah, what's your prediction for, you know, this year next year or whatever, for years it's been the financial industry is coming and track by will be here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's time and I think it's happening a real time and forever ours.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what changed?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like why are all these large financial institutions more comfortable with blockchain-based settlement systems, blockchain-based platforms?
[SPEAKER_00]: What changed since just over the past few years?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think that if you ask folks that are hanging out in regulatory circles, they'd point to changes of hands of both the SEC and the SEC, I think that's the first place.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you think about, again, these trans-fifers, they were looking for clear rules and guidance.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're dealing with publicly traded companies that can't take risks.
[SPEAKER_02]: They need believable solutions, correct?
[SPEAKER_02]: They need believe it may enhance their system.
[SPEAKER_02]: They need believe that it may enhance
[SPEAKER_02]: their ability to deliver a better product to a user, which is the client of theirs.
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the end of the day, they can't risk everything they've built, you know, and find themselves, you know, crossing a regulatory line and having the ramifications and the repercussions that fell with their after.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think you have to point at clear rules being given, and that is actually part of the spurring of, you know, the advancements.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now the last point on that, that's clear rules and regulations here in the US.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's remember that, you know, other jurisdictions were out there, you know, kind of understanding that rule making had to happen, that requirements needed to be clear, in order for there to be advancements.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was the catch-up period we had in the US.
[SPEAKER_02]: It just happened very, very rapidly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, here's two more clear rules in regulation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that's going to hurt anything in the industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's something we've been talking about for far too long.
[SPEAKER_00]: Feels like we're getting a little closer.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of close.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's been a couple big weeks here, but more to come, hopefully.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's look in the future a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like you have a little bit of fortune teller in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think about institutional digital asset markets and what they're going to look like in three to five years from now?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing you're going to see falling is going to be the totalization of more than just treasury funds, right, for large scale institutions.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be more than that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, our thesis in our belief in the place true and maybe a place true and someone else is actually author of the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: But our thesis dating back to 2017, when we coined the term PTF blockchain transfer refund, our belief was that the blockchain wrapper was going to be the logical evolution of all pooled investment vehicles.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think like mutual fund moving to ETF and then think ETF moving to BTF.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now it took the ETF, you know, something like seven years in order for it to really catch on and for it to gain widespread adoption.
[SPEAKER_02]: One could say maybe that's the same trajectory we're seeing here.
[SPEAKER_02]: But just like the ETF, the wrapper that's been created around some of the larger tokenized money market funds that I mentioned before is very applicable to other different asset classes.
[SPEAKER_02]: It just happens to be that the craze for yield has been the engine that's been driving the creation of these instruments.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what's the stock, others from creating baskets of equities or other different instruments?
[SPEAKER_02]: Notwithstanding the fact that at some point you'll be able to put digital assets into these wrappers as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I think that the first part there is that, you know, kind of more than just tokenized stocks, which I think everybody is talking about right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's created a, you know, a crazy in the US and around the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: You look at, you know, kind of markets that never had access to, you know, NASDAQ or NISI and all of the sudden they could, you know, log onto,
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, buy it and they've got the ability to go ahead and, you know, buy tokenizers of Apple and Tesla.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But here in the U.S., I think we're going to see that wave happen after it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're already seeing people posture and you're seeing the exchanges already making their announcements.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was kicked off last summer by Robin Hood, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And now you've seen everyone follow their in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but I think that the other, you know, other major developed, you're going to see, um, maybe transparent to the user, and it's going to be the implementation of blockchain technology into what, you know, um, you know, once everyday activities are, and, you know, the best example I can think about that was, and it's really probably dated now, it's over a year old, but it was a project that was worked on, it can junction with a bunch of different firms, but led by JP Morgan, um, and it was their project carding.
[SPEAKER_02]: and that was a demonstration that you could use blockchain technology and tokenization of assets.
[SPEAKER_02]: In order to go out and balance and then rebalance a 401k using tokens.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you're doing that already when you think about the election you're making on a website.
[SPEAKER_02]: How cool is it that you could actually now, you know, to make the election, but you're doing it not just saying, I want someone else to do this for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: But now you're saying, okay, if I'm actively taking buying these tokens and putting them in my portfolio and taking one step further, maybe even like self-custling it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think that's really, really cool stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's certainly an interesting time and I think every, I mean, that's what we're all in the industry, you know, it's it's innovation, something's changing every single day, there's something new every day and it's just an exciting time to be involved in the entire crypto space.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to give an opportunity for you to give a shout out so people could learn more about link how can they find more information about the company how can they find more information about you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thanks, bro.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if you want to find out more information on Link, please feel free to find us online and you can find us at link.network.
[SPEAKER_02]: Same thing on Twitter or X as well, or if one reached out to me directly, you can find me at gd.link.network.
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again for joining us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Super cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having me great to be with you both Brian and Joe.